Not Peace But A Sword: A Sunday Rumination

     Yes, yes, I know it’s been a while. To produce a Rumination, I need to be “in the mood” and “in the groove” simultaneously. Those conditions don’t intersect as often as I’d like. If you look forward to these faith-oriented pieces, Gentle Reader, I’m sorry to have to tell you so.

     But today, as they say at the hot dog stand, we have a wiener:

     I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. [Luke 12:49-53]

     Alternately, from Matthew:

     Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. [Matthew 10:32-35]

     These passages cause quite a lot of Christians a kind of spiritual heartburn. I can easily understand it; they once had the same effect on me. Over time I learned better, for I learned to accept the Gospels as a whole rather than as snippets that can be misinterpreted. Viewed holistically, there’s no conflict between Jesus’s proclamations above and the other, gentler dispensations of the Prince of Peace. However, there are some mighty large crevices between His statements – emphatically including the ones above – and some of the teachings we hear from contemporary clerics.

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     My parish – St. Louis de Montfort, 75 New York Avenue, Sound Beach, NY; Monsignor Christopher Heller, pastor; all contributions gratefully accepted – is afflicted with a “weekend assistant” who’s done considerable damage to the Catholic faith. I’ll call him Father X. (As it happens, that’s his middle initial. Why yes, his first name is Francis; however did you guess? Yes, yes, his last name is Pizzarelli, but how irrelevant can you get?)

     Father X’s offenses against Catholicism and Christianity generally are legion. In particular:

• He routinely conducts a non-standard Mass;
• He’s often referred to God as “Father and Mother;”
• He’s referred to the Ten Commandments as “interesting guidelines;”
• His homilies are often laced with his politics – and yes, they’re left-liberal politics;
• He frequently promotes himself and his emphases at the expense of the words of the Redeemer.

     In what variant of Christianity, other than the Marxist-Leninist “liberation theology” rampant in South America, is such conduct acceptable from a priest of Christ?

     Consider the words of the Gospel passages cited above. Nothing could be plainer than the message therein: Even within their own families, Christians will be hated and persecuted for their Christianity. Yet Father X characterized them as exhortations to compassion and inclusion.

     Father X frequently harps on compassion. He’s called the Lord’s Prayer a prayer for compassion. He’s said outright that compassion was at the heart of Jesus’s mission on Earth. Is there any slightest possibility that this heavily educated Montfortian priest knows the definition of compassion?

     compassion n: Literally, suffering with another; a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another; pity; commiseration.

     One who strives to use words according to their exact meanings, as I do, should be appalled at the idea that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Redeemer of Mankind, who took the weight of all our sins, from one end of time to the other, on His own shoulders so that we might be spared the penalty for them, actually wants us to suffer.

     But that’s Father X for you.

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     Jesus told us quite plainly in the Gospel passages cited above that there will be division and strife between those who accept Him and His New Covenant and those who don’t. This forecast has proved correct over the centuries. Sometimes, bad and misguided Christians have been the instigators of such strife. Such a hundred eighty degree divergence from Christ’s teachings cannot be adequately condemned. But strife there has been and will be, until Mankind is no more.

     The sword appears to be everywhere today: between nations, between races, between ethnicities, between occupations, between communities, between husbands and wives, and between parents and children. Where, then, lies the peace we seek?

     The late Clarence Carson put it memorably in the conclusion to his volume The Flight From Reality:

     To say that every man shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, to couple this with plowshares and pruning hooks, is a way of saying, I think, that every man should tend to his own plot of land. Or: we shall have peace when each man tends to his own plot. There is great wisdom for us in this. The flight from reality has taken us into a way of thinking which justifies every man trying to tend every other man’s plot of land. The sword has been taken to force people to do what others think they should. Meddlesomeness, busybodyness, do-goodism have been linked with the sword to produce the turmoil of our times....

     Such meaning as there is to life on this earth is found in tending our own plot of ground, in tasting the fruits of our own labors, in developing our own skills and perceptions, in sharing with others freely, in doing that which is appropriate to our talents, in striving to fulfill our ideals for ourselves, in the pleasure of a job well done, in the company of friends we have chosen and who have chosen us, in bringing up our own children, in short, in sitting under our own vine and fig tree.

     It is so, says the Prophet, “for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.” Each of us makes his own return to reality when he concludes with the poet:

     In His will is our peace.

     It cannot be put better than that.

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     In summation, Christ, Who said He brought “not peace but a sword,” was not an apostle of compassion, but of repentance and forgiveness freely given to those who would accept it. The very idea was horrendous to the religious authorities of His day, for guilt and fear were the instruments with which they kept the people in submission. When you can’t even remember all 613 “commandments,” there’s no possibility of conforming to them all; thus, every Jew of that era could be kept perpetually in anxiety about his standing with God. Christ’s emphasis of the Decalogue, and the two Great Commandments upon which the Ten rest, swept away the Sanhedrin’s presumption of the authority to judge and condemn. Why else would they have wanted Him dead?

     There you have it, folks: twelve simple, clear, inherently just prescriptions and proscriptions. Seven virtues to be practiced each day, to reinforce the twelve. Decency, courtesy, and the appropriate focus upon our own vines and fig trees, with charity toward those among us who fall hard through no fault of their own. That’s Christianity for you. Not the prattlings of self-promoters who can’t see a camera or a microphone without rushing to get in front of it. And “compassion” – suffering along with others – ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.

     May God bless and keep you all!

Treading On Trade

     A couple of doctrinaire libertarians have upbraided me for coming out against one of the articles of the libertarian faith: completely unrestricted free trade across national borders. So I thought I’d spend a few hundred words on the subject, in the interests of explaining my position.

     A cross-border trade can be either dyadic – a simple exchange between two trading partners – or complex – an exchange that partakes of interventions by other parties than the nominal traders. At this time, much cross-border trade is complex, in that it’s affected by intrusive governmental policies: typically tariffs, subsidies, or asymmetrical regulation. Much of the problem of job loss in America stems from such intrusions.

     If one is determined to omit consideration of the difference between dyadic and complex trades, there are many cases to be analyzed before arriving at a conclusion about the goodness or badness of “free trade.” However, the ultimate question is a simple one:

Is complex trade legitimate trade, or is it an exercise of governmental policies?

     My answer is that complex trade is not legitimately free trade. It’s a process whereby governments strain to acquire certain economic or fiscal advantages for themselves and/or for favored corporations or industries. In other words, it’s morally and practically indistinguishable from pre-Enlightenment mercantilism.

     William Hawkins and others have championed a return to mercantilism as the only truly “conservative” economic model. If one regards a government, an entity that gets what it seeks by exercises of coercion, as a legitimate player in the economy, this position is defensible...but I don’t hold that view. It’s my position that as soon as a government does anything to render trade complex, it ceases to be “free trade.” Therefore, measures taken in defense of one’s own economy become morally defensible.

     But what, then? Shall Americans be “deprived” of cheap foreign goods on the grounds that the actions of a government – whether ours or another – are rendering them cheaper than American-made equivalents? No. Rather, let the prices of those “cheaper” goods be raised by an import tariff until they’re roughly competitive, allowing for differences in quality, with the American equivalents. Then use the proceeds from that tariff to reduce domestic tax burdens. In effect, that would confiscate the proceeds from governmental interventions and redistribute them to the longsuffering American public.

     This was the original – one might even say “conservative” – means for financing the federal government. Remember that from 1866 to roughly the end of the Nineteenth Century, there was no income tax and no corporation tax. Yet the federal tax surplus was so large that Washington could find no way to spend it.

     I’m sure there will be nit-picking. The largest nit, of course, is that we could never hold Washington to such a policy. It would surely “absorb” the proceeds from the tariff in increased federal spending. As matters stand today, this charge is irrefutable.

     Thoughts, anyone? Politely, please. It’s not yet 7:00 AM and I’m already having a very bad day.

A Saturday Smorgasbord

     I haven’t done one of these in a while, and my collection of “must write about this” links is near to bursting, so it’s time. Pour yourself another cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy the madness.

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     First up, an absolutely marvelous eight minutes on why “modern art” absolutely sucks:

     (The word salad from the gallery brochure had me in stitches.)

     This gentleman speaks for me...with a quibble. Art that genuinely commands admiration does require effort and skill; no argument there. But a third element is required as well: the perceptible intention to communicate something. For example, a painter might expend a great deal of effort and display supremely exacting craft on an oil painting that exactly reproduces a photograph – but why? It would amount to an exercise, nothing more. There must be a message, and as with great fiction, it must tell us something transcendent, something eternal about the human condition, or about Man’s relationship to God.

     Now, few are the painters of great dedication and consummate skill who’d expend months on reproducing a photo in oil paints. So I’d imagine that my quibble is widely understood and endorsed...but like many such truths, it’s important to say it out loud now and then.

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     Catholic monk Aurelius Moner has written an important essay on certitude: i.e., whether we can have full confidence in what we perceive. The subject is filled with difficulties, owing to the snipes from those skeptical of humanity itself. I’ve known a couple of people like that: the sort that claim that “our so-called knowledge is too theory-laden” for the sort of confidence Brother Moner argues for. The ultimate refutation of the skeptics is simpler than you might think. Highly recommended.

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     The mighty Ace of Spades is still on fire. His subject today is the sort of pseudo-Randianism that dismisses loyalty to Americans – that’s not a typo – in preference for corporate interests. Here’s the haymaker:

     Can I ask a question of the people who keep telling me they are Really Good At Politics(TM)?:

     If you're basically telling American workers you plan to simply replace them with cheaper imports and they can move to Mexico where prices are cheaper if they don't like it- -

     um, how exactly do you get them to vote for you?

     Please read it all.

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     Daniel Greenfield can be repetitive, on occasion even trite, but not this time:

     In the last election, Obama told Americans that they weren’t responsible for their accomplishments. “You didn’t build that,” was his message to his slaves. They didn’t build that. He did.

     But they did build that.

     Slaves built the Obama lifestyle. Slaves who struggle to get by. Who scrimp and save to have a few hundred dollars on hand in case of an emergency. That’s the cost of a single dish at a dinner to their masters in the White House. Slaves who fear losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families watch their hard-earned money being squandered on another vacation and another party....

     Government, like slavery, is an institution. Like slavery, it claims to civilize its dependents. In reality it exploits them. It promises them security in exchange for freedom. It takes away the products of their toil and then tells them that they didn’t build that. It claims a false moral authority to exploit them.

     Michelle Obama is a slave-owner lecturing her slaves about slavery. And Michelle and Barack are the tip of a very large institution which is built on depriving Americans of their political and economic freedoms.

     The congruency between being a slave and being the subject of an unlimited government is more than merely rhetorical – and that’s something our indispensable political class does not want you to know.

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     Our British cousins have suffered the plague of “multiculturalism” (“societal Stockholm syndrome” – Mark Steyn) even longer than have we on the west side of the pond. However, first begun may also be first done:

     If ever you’ve worried that parts of Britain now resemble some hideously corrupt, Third World Islamic basket case hell hole then you’re going to love Sir Eric Pickles’s gloriously robust report on electoral fraud....

     The languages spoken in polling stations (and other places such as the count) has recently become an issue with concerns that promoting the use of non-English languages could disguise coercion or influence within the polling station. This has not been helped by the Electoral Commission facilitating what it calls “community languages”. Such an approach undermines integration and leaves the door open to fraud. These are not ‘community languages’ – they are foreign languages.

     Here is a bloody-minded Yorkshireman being about as blunt as you possibly can in an official report. The reason Muslim communities get away with flouting and corrupting British values, he is saying, is because the relevant authorities are turning a blind eye. In this instance, he is referring to the practice of “booth capturing”, explained here for Breitbart last year by Jonathan Foreman.

     Few people in the UK have heard of “Booth-Capturing”. In India and across South Asia it is a political phenomenon that is all too familiar. It is one of the most visible and outrageous illegal methods that are used to undermine democratic elections in the region.

     Essentially, thugs working on behalf of a political party physically take over polling stations and use the threat of violence to prevent supporters of opposing parties from voting. (It helps that many parties have youth wings whose real purpose is the supply of necessary muscle).

     In Britain, it’s mainly Muslims. In Philadelphia, it’s the New Black Panthers. Remember them, Gentle Reader?

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     Finally, a squib that warms the cockles of my ossified sexagenarian heart: a British bar owner who’s had it with customers who won’t put down their cell phones:

     The owner of a cocktail bar in the UK has turned to physics in an attempt to force his customers to actually talk to other instead of just staring at social media all night. Steve Tyler, who owns the Gin Tub in East Sussex, has built his very own Faraday cage around the establishment to block mobile phone signals from entering the building....

     "It's not the perfect system, it's not military grade," Tyler explained. "I just wanted people to enjoy a night out in my bar, without being interrupted by their phones."

     "Rather than asking them not to use their phones, I stopped the phones working," he added.

     If Mr. Tyler has posted a sign to this effect outside his establishment, I’d dearly love to see his patronage figures before and after the event. In any case: Bravo, Mr. Tyler!

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     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. It promises to be a fun-filled day, replete with all manner of home maintenance. See you tomorrow...I hope.

Metaphysical Bumblings #2

From the comments section of an SSC post, Scott Alexander answers why he thinks there might be some important truth to be uncovered in psychedelics research --

When people are on psychedelics, they feel incredibly happy, incredibly compassionate, like the world is meaningful, like they want to help people, and like all of this is completely obvious and even logically necessary. They understand the problems of life but they feel able to deal with them in stride and believe that there’s a higher purpose behind them. 

It seems really sad that there’s no way to promote this state that lasts more than a few hours and doesn’t have the same level of complications and side effects.

Hmmm.... meaning, a higher purpose, love, happiness, helpfulness, and compassion.

Jeez, where could we come by stuff like that?

Jeez, oh jeez...  ok, no snickering about the psychedelics = religion.  This is metaphysics -- serious stuff!

ProTip -- I'm pretty sure there's not just a whole lot that's 'logically necessary,' strictly speaking, at least when you are operating from a standard of 'contingent on nothing.'  But you might ask ... oh ... I don't know ... Kim Jong Un, or somebody like that.  But to my way of thinking (or at least, the way I understand it) if logic were a mill, it would need some grist.  Just the way it is.

And if a person takes a very strong and principled stance against Be Not a Jerk Unto Others, and Don't Worry -- Be Happy!, and Stuff is, Like, Meaningful, and Stuff until such time as it be proven logically necessary to A Very Exacting Degree of Certainty, well, methinks the problem is more likely to lie with him than with The Universe.

Metaphysical Bumblings #1

From somewhere on the interwebz --

Is beauty subjective? People have strong feelings in both directions. A stylized representation of possible opinions about the nature of beauty might look like this: 

• Strong Subjectivism: the phenomenon of beauty is essentially random with little regularity, a purely personal response that is not predictable across time and person.
• Weak Objectivism: the phenomenon of beauty can be partly predicted by definable regularities in its perception as a result of our specific environments of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA).
• Strong Objectivism: the phenomenon of beauty can be predicted by definable regularities because of regularities in our EEAs and in the phenomenon of intelligence itself.

What?  That's it?

Whatever happened to beings made in the image of God, or participation in the divine consciousness, or any of the other transcendent metaphysical whatsits that provide perfectly serviceable justifications for objective notions of truth, beauty and goodness?  Aren't there supposed to be people out there -- quite a few I'm told -- that believe Man is fundamentally a divine spirit, ultimately grounded in the eternal, with ready access to eternal truths?

Bueller?  ...  Bueller?

 I mean, we're only talking about religions that the vast majority of human beings have ostensibly been members for, what, the last thousand years or so?  And yet we're down to the deification of intelligence? Can't even crack the top three?

And while I'm asking obtuse hypotheticals, how come I have to be the one to bring up this kind of stuff in conversation?  And people look at me weird?

 Isn't this basic Christian metaphysical thought?  Why don't I hear my pastor talking about this?  Why do I have to go digging through the bowels of places like Project Gutenberg to find that kind of stuff?  Why do I have to patch it all together for myself, and/or make it up out of whole cloth?

 Maybe because it's all arm-wavey god-of-the-gaps X-tian nonsense.  Obviously, the apotheosis of intelligence is a much more serious answer.  Even better -- just not having a clue.  Better yet, the denial of all meaning in such silly questions and notions.

 Those silly religious idgets...

Ominous Yet Idiotic

     You might be familiar with the name of Cass Sunstein. He’s currently the Obama Administration’s Administrator for the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. (What, you didn’t know we have a Ministry of Truth?) He’s also the hard-left ideologue who proposed (among other things) that the pull-based nature of the World Wide Web gives rise to “me-zines” that “should” be broken up in favor of a “common public experience of the news.” (I cannot say with certainty that he was in the pay of any major media organization, but one never knows.) And it appears that he’s really, really stupid. Some tidbits from the linked paper:

     ...conspiracy theories are a subset of the large category of false beliefs, and also of the somewhat smaller category of beliefs that are both false and harmful. Consider, for example, the beliefs that prolonged exposure to sunlight is actually healthy and that climate change is neither occurring nor likely to occur. These beliefs are (in our view) both false and dangerous, but as stated, they do not depend on, or posit, any kind of conspiracy theory. We shall see that the mechanisms that account for conspiracy theories overlap with those that account for false and dangerous beliefs of all sorts, including those that fuel anger and hatred. But as we shall also see, conspiracy theories have some distinctive features, above all because of their self-sealing quality; the very arguments that give rise to them, and account for their plausibility, make it more difficult for outsiders to rebut or even to question them.

     Mind you, Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule make it plain that they’re looking for active techniques to discredit conspiracy theories. But the very attempt to discredit a conspiracy theory will cause its holders to lump you into the conspiracy. That strengthens the believing community’s internal allegiances: to the theory and to one another.

     (I did say he was stupid. But he’s a Harvard man, so how could that possibly be?)

     But there’s more and better to come:

     This is not, and is not be intended to be, a general claim that conspiracy theories are unjustified or unwarranted. Much depends on the background state of knowledge producing institutions. If those institutions are generally trustworthy, in part because they are embedded in an open society with a well-functioning marketplace of ideas and free flow of information, then conspiracy theories will generally (which is not to say always) be unjustified. On the other hand, individuals in societies with systematically malfunctioning or skewed institutions of knowledge – say, individuals who live in an authoritarian regime lacking a free press – may have good reason to distrust all or most of the official denials they hear.

     The howler there is only implied, but it’s enormous even so, as will become apparent from reading Sunstein’s suggestions about cognitive infiltration:

     What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

     And exactly why should “government” concern itself with conspiracy theories? I think my Gentle Readers can answer that one for themselves...if they can bear to put themselves oh-so-temporarily in the place of “the government.” Apropos of which, apparently we’re supposed to trust those noble souls:

     In Section C, we examine the role of law and judges in fashioning the government’s response. We will ask whether judges do more good than harm by invoking statutes such as the Freedom of Information Act to force government to disclose facts that would rebut conspiracy theories. Our conclusions are generally skeptical: there is little reason to believe that judges can improve on administrative choices in these situations.

     Feeling all warm and cozy about “government,” Gentle Reader?

     Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn. One promising tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions. Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in weakening or even breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that constitute these networks and groups.

     How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups, including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior, their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts. Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.

     Oh, it’s about “diversity!” Well, that must be all right, then. But this hearkens back to Glenn Beck’s best-known epigram...which I’ll reserve for a moment longer. On to Sunstein’s thrilling Conclusion:

     Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence. If government can dispel such theories, it should do so. One problem is that its efforts might be counterproductive, because efforts to rebut conspiracy theories also legitimate them. We have suggested, however, that government can minimize this effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cognitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy minded groups and informationally isolated social networks.

     In fewer words: “This wouldn’t work if we do it only a little, so we should do it a lot! But none of that nasty transparency in government, mind you; we must trust Our Leaders to know best.” IF there’s any stance more capable of fueling conspiracy theories, I can’t think of it at the moment.

     I told you at the outset that Sunstein is stupid. I hope that by now you see what I meant. It’s an open question whether a stupid statist is more dangerous than a smart one, or vice versa. However, America is well supplied with both sorts.

     “First they nudge, then they shove, then they shoot.” – Glenn Beck

     Have a nice day.

Spread This Far And Wide!

     I don’t think further comment is required, do you, Gentle Reader?

Partisanry Part 2: Corruption

     Via Ace, we have this illuminating tidbit:

     Newly released emails from Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state raise questions about the nature of the department's relationship with the Clinton Foundation.

     Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, released 296 pages of emails from the Democratic presidential nominee, including 44 that Judicial Watch says were not previously handed over to the State Department by Clinton. The emails, many of which are heavily redacted, raise questions about the Clinton Foundation's influence on the State Department and its relations during her tenure.

     In one instance, top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band lobbied Clinton aides for a job for someone else in the State Department. In the email, Band tells Hillary Clinton's former aides at the department -- Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin -- that it is "important to take care of (redacted)." Band is reassured by Abedin that "Personnel has been sending him options."

     Looks like a clear attempt to use favoritism in a hiring decision, eh what? Of course, the Clintons’ spokesdroid attempted to brush it off:

     "Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the Foundation's work," said an emailed statement from Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin. "They are communications between her aides and the President's personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the Secretary's former staffers who was not employed by the Foundation."

     The Clinton campaign said Wednesday that Chagoury only wanted to offer insights on the then-upcoming Lebanese election and was not looking for any specific action from the State Department.

     "The right-wing organization behind this lawsuit has been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s and no matter how this group tries to mischaracterize these documents, the fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as secretary of state because of donations to the Clinton Foundation," Schwerin said in a statement.

     Needless to say, the law as written is supposed to apply to all, high and low alike. However, if you want to see a Democrat high-liner live by the same laws as the rest of us, you must be a nasty right-winger. Probably hate old people and minorities. Whatever your particular disease is, there must be something wrong with you.

     The “foundation” dodge is one of the hoariest. Tax-free foundations are a vehicle through which the very wealthy can shelter their true income against IRS predation, while they continue to have the de facto use and benefits of that income as if it had flowed directly into their pockets. And wonder of wonders: Nearly every such foundation labors to pull public policy further to the left.

     Ace is livid about it:

     America is being divided, before your very eyes, into those castes with Juice and those without Juice. It's devolving into a fucking organized crime family.

     We are not equal under the law -- far from it. And every day this corrupt gang makes this more and more normal and more and more acceptable to the public....

     Anyone who says they're for Equal Treatment Under the Law and then who supports someone who has been, is, and will continue to be Above the Law is simply a liar or hopelessly confused.

     But let’s get back to partisanry. This is supposed to be a piece about partisanry, isn’t it?

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     Partisans – of the “strong” and “absolute” varieties, at least – will automatically incline toward the support of a co-partisan in any contretemps with an “outsider.” When the co-partisan is of high stature, there are sometimes other factors in play, such as the possibility of a tangible reward. But even in the absence of such rewards, shared partisan allegiance can be a powerful determinant of courses taken.

     The Department of Justice is part of the executive branch of the federal government. Just now (as if you needed to be told), the executive branch is under the control of the Democrats. Hillary Clinton is the jackasses’ sole hope of perpetuating that control. Bill Clinton is their most admired past president. Partisan discrimination in the Clintons’ favor is easy to suspect, albeit (in the nature of the federal government and its murky innards) difficult to prove.

     The patterns of the past few years are striking. At every turn in Hillary Clinton’s quest for the Oval Office at which she came under scrutiny for dubious or illegal actions, Democrats in high office have looked the other way. Some of this can be explained by fear of the Clinton Death Machine, whose body count has risen rather high over the years. Some of it might be “purchased” with job offers or outright payments. But a good part of it – perhaps the greater part – comes from partisan allegiance.

     Republicans have done this too, of course. Democrats have had more success at getting away with it, owing to their allies in the media and the enormous “permanent government.” In either case, it’s what our British brethren would call the “Not A Member Of My Club” syndrome. It’s gotten deeper and more flagrant as the political divisions between Left and Right have hardened into unconcealed hatred.

     And it should be quite clear that it’s the exact opposite of a Rule of Law.

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     Sentiment among the Founding Fathers was against political parties. Much of the Constitutional machinery was intended, at least in part, to inhibit their formation, and, should they emerge even so, to impede their hijinks. The Founders were far clearer-sighted about such things than anyone of the current age.

     Partisanry is nothing but a form of collectivism. “The party” doesn’t really exist outside the minds of those who voluntarily pledge their allegiance to it. Every party will have a hierarchy, however well disguised, with a pinnacle group that directs the rest of the mass by means both overt and covert. Moreover, that pinnacle group is likely to be utterly amoral and as ruthless as any totalitarian oligarchy. This is implicit in the nature of an organized group.

     The demonstrations have been many, these past five decades. Yet there remain many “strong” or “absolute” partisans who reflexively defend “their people” under all circumstances. Their guy could be discovered at midnight with one hand caught in the till and the other on a twelve-year-old’s genitals – you pick the sex – and they’d still insist he was being framed. Their ultimate fallback, of course, is that “the other side does it, too.”

     This is politics in these United States in this year of Our Lord 2016. It’s the reason so many Americans have clapped their hands over their ears, tuned out every source of political exhortation, accusation, or blather, and resolved to sit utterly still until election season is well and truly behind us.

     Pray.

Partisanry

     I was about to start writing this piece, but was diverted by a call from my wife. She’s just been rear-ended on the highway. Back later.

     EXTREMELY LONG UPDATE: Well, that was bracing. Yes, Beth is okay, though her minivan will need some work. Thank you for your concern. (Great God in heaven, Long Island drivers are completely inept on anything but a perfectly straight, perfectly dry road!) Now where was I? Ah yes: partisanry.

     A partisan is a party loyalist: one who allows “his” party to guide his electoral decisions. There are degrees of partisanry, of course. We might call one who always does as his party directs an “absolute” partisan, one who usually goes with his party’s nominees a “strong” partisan, and one to whom the party’s choices are determinative only if no other criterion emerges a “weak” partisan. All of these positions can be observed in the people around us.

     But wait: this “his party” business can be semantically misleading. A partisan doesn’t “own” his party. Who does? Who actually decides on the party’s platform, nominees, and other decisions? Surely we should ask who guides the party in those matters, and according to what criteria. Shouldn’t we?

     The answer isn’t obvious.

---

     Is there any sense in seeking the “owners” of a political party? An owner, in common parlance, is conceded rights over what he owns: excludability, times and methods of employment, ultimate disposition, and so forth. Does anyone have “rights” in a party, or to it, or over it? How does one become a party strategist, planner, manager, kingmaker? Who decides?

     A lot of voting and vote-like decision making occurs within a party organization, of course, but a fair number of important decisions are made by individuals as well – and not always because the individual in question has been accorded some kind of formal authority. So it isn’t all electoral in nature.

     Also, party behavior often seems to contradict itself. There have been numerous cases in the past few years when the seemingly powerful Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill went against the GOP’s platform in quite obvious ways. Nor was it always the case that “something more important” was clearly at stake.

     Clearly, if there are strategists, planners, managers, et cetera in the Republican Party, they’re not in perfect command of the party. Whatever authority they have isn’t absolute. It might be more than advisory, but it’s not unquestionable, nor can it be enforced as a government enforces its decrees. Whether the authority of the “top brass” in the Democrat Party is similar, I can’t be certain, though the evidence suggests it.

     There might be more guidance in the processes that govern a “colony organism:” i.e., an apparently unitary creature whose body includes much smaller organisms that have quasi-independent lives and exhibit some amount of “independent” behavior.

     Because we are conscious creatures, we have a concept of ourselves as unitary entities. However, we’re closer to being colonies of smaller symbiotic and commensal organisms: our many kinds of differentiated cells, plus the several varieties of bacteria and fungi that we must have inside us for our alimentary canals to work properly.

     Note that none of these smaller entities are aware of one another’s existence. “Our” cells aren’t aware that we’ve been “colonized” by bacteria that shares none of “our” DNA. Neither do the bacteria in our guts know about the “native” cells around them. Each does what it does for its own purposes. Sometimes they come into conflict. Sometimes they’re invaded by organisms that our bodily “zoning laws” can’t tolerate, and we get sick. In sum they allow us to do what we do: at some times well, at other times poorly.

     Political parties display some similarity to that model. Some of a party’s “cells” – call then the party’s central nervous system – have more overall influence than others on party behavior. As they’re human rather than microorganisms, they also have individual desires, fears, and convictions. They don’t serve the party in the blind fashion of a muscle cell or a digestive bacterium. And sometimes, when the party appears to have been invaded by something hostile to them – i.e., something that threatens their influence and stature within the party – they treat the invaders as a threat to the party at large.

     Consider in this light the behavior of Republican Party luminaries in response to the rise of Donald Trump. They’ve told us on many occasions that he’s a threat to the party itself. Perhaps they’re correct. But perhaps he’s really only a threat to them as high-status Republicans: strategists, planners, managers, et cetera. He says and does exactly as he pleases. He pays them no heed. If I thought myself to possess some sort of authority over the GOP – a sway that comes with personal prestige and the ability to influence the use of party funds, for example – I might react just as they have. It’s natural to want to protect one’s “rice bowl.”

     But of course, the strategists, planners, managers, et cetera. aren’t the only cells in this organism. There are also lots of digestive bacteria – the donors – and muscle cells – the activists and motivated voters. And they’re all conscious individuals with their own desires, fears, and convictions. So what the central nervous system wants to expel, the other cells just might want to retain...even if it must ultimately result in the expulsion of the central nervous system.

     Is this a perfect picture? Assuredly not. But as a model for thought, it has some relevance, and more than a little appeal.

---

     In all probability, you’ve heard the following joke. Nevertheless, after the above, I feel it’s mandatory to close with it.

     When God made Man, all the parts of the body argued who should be boss.

     The brain explained that since he controlled everything already, he had the position de facto and this should be recognized de jure.

     The eyes countered that without them, the man would be helpless, so they should be boss.

     The hands said that without them, the man could do nothing, so they should be boss.

     The legs pointed out that as they carried the man wherever he wanted to go, they should be boss.

     The stomach countered with the explained criticism that as he digested all the food, he should be boss.

     Then the asshole applied for the job.

     All the other body parts laughed so hard that the asshole got mad and closed up.

     After a while, the legs got wobbly, the hands shook, the brain went foggy, the stomach threw up and the eyes became crossed and unable to see. They all conceded and made the asshole boss.

     Which all goes to show you: you needn't be a brain to be boss.

     Just an asshole.

     Have a nice day.

An Overwhelming Question

     First, a little Eliot:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

     Thomas Stearns Eliot, for my money the greatest of the Modernist poets, was in many ways a child out of his time. From the evidence, he detested the era into which he matured; he condemned its belligerence, its advancing secularism, its focus on wealth and position, and what he regarded as ephemera of diversion and sensation that reduced men to infants. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, Eliot’s best known poems, are filled with denigrations, both simple and subtle, of his era. We may disagree with his evaluations, but not with the power of his verse, which continues to stun fresh readers even as the decades remove all our memories of the environment – early Twentieth Century England – against which he railed.

     But note: A child out of his time is nevertheless firmly embedded in the milieu that produced him. He cannot escape it. He faces a stark choice: to adapt to it, or to close himself off to it. There are no other possibilities.

     We have a number of persons among us who detest the present day and its ways quite as deeply as Eliot detested his era. Some argue for pruning away those of its features they disapprove. Others seek to tear it down entirely and replace it with some impossible vision of an ideological Utopia. And some merely wish to be left alone to live as they prefer.

     But among these are scattered members of a group independent of other alignments: they who seek to prescribe “correct” attitudes: what must be said, what may, and what must not. Their influence over actual events is dubious; their influence over our conversations is of greater interest.

     Call these the Promulgators of Acceptable Nostrums, or Poans for brevity.

---

     At this time, the Poans are straining to correct us about certain departures from their preferred orthodoxies. For example, Poans of the Left are displeased that the supposed national consensus about abortion on demand, which was supposed to be universally accepted as “a woman’s right to choose,” is coming into question. Poans on the Right are exercised that there should be any dispute about the absolute goodness of “free trade agreements.” Both Left and Right Poans are deeply disturbed by the rise of political figures with national followings who dare to defy “their” parties’ managers and power-brokers.

     As usual, the Poans’ major tactic is talk; they have little else to offer. But they’re relentless in dictating what others must, may, and must not say.

     In a sense, the Poans’ focus is correct: if you can control what the people are talking about – especially the specific terms they use and the ways they use them – you have an excellent chance of controlling the people. However, it’s become effectively impossible to control the people’s talk. Though it be monitored, recorded, and played back a thousand times, talk is going on along channels no one can supervise, censor, nor shut down. Some of it occurs on talk radio, some on the Internet, and some in ordinary living rooms from coast to coast.

     Talk the Poans disapprove is subversive. It threatens the order of things. It portends changes the Poans dislike...including, quite possibly, the diminution and dismissal of the Poans themselves.

     Which leads us to an overwhelming question:

Who gave the Poans authority?

     Not I. I’m certain you didn’t do so either, Gentle Reader. So who gave them their crowns and scepters?

     First observation: The Poans, like T. S. Eliot, are children out of their time. Their intellectual predecessors commanded greater influence than they do, which causes them a bilious and consuming envy. But the Poans of today don’t react by closing themselves off from the world. Rather, they strive to re-establish a state of affairs wherein they could wield the influence they believe is theirs by right.

     However, he whose only weapon is disapproval has no sway over one who merely shrugs, dismisses him, and continues on.

---

     Second observation: Before the emergence of talk radio and the Internet, talk among us groundlings wasn’t controllable, but the promulgation of received wisdom – what is so often mistakenly called “common sense” – was centralized and closely managed. Then, the Poans had real sway, something akin to actual power. We read the newspaper: typically, a powerful regional daily. We watched three channels of television, which were strangely in agreement on virtually everything. There were no alternatives other than talk at the garage or over the back fence.

     The Poans of today would dearly love to have been of that era rather than our own. Sadly – for them – there’s no going back. In consequence, today’s Poans are disheveled, wild-eyed creatures, forever sporting looks of alarm. They rail at us for our unacceptable attitudes and assertions. They condemn our departures from their prescriptions. They often do so at elevated voices, and in the tones of anger and fear. And it avails them little.

     But it leads us, or should, to another overwhelming question:

What are the Poans afraid of?

     They have public stature, if only for their positions in the media. The great majority of them are materially comfortable and in no appreciable danger. Few of us aspire to replace them or sit alongside them. So what’s the big deal?

     Perhaps it’s all about pique. No one likes the idea that he’s being ignored. If he raises his voice but is ignored with equal firmness, it can make him peevish. He might start to say intemperate things about those who ignore him. That would diminish his relevance still further. This explanation is quite plausible. But there’s another possibility I find more persuasive.

     There’s long been a channel that connects the world of the Talking Heads, where most of our well known Poans can be found – especially on Sunday mornings – and the corridors of power. For a long time, persons moved fluidly between those two environments. Some political careers were born that way; others “went to pasture” in that fashion. However, advancement from Poan to a seat of power has become more difficult as the Poans’ perceptible influence over our talk has declined...and strange to say, few of them want to remain as they are to the end of their careers. They want a turn at governing. Indeed, they feel they deserve it.

     Deny a man what he believes he deserves and you earn his wrath.

---

     Much of the hullaballoo over the Trump and Sanders candidacies is from Poans desperate to retain their dwindling chances of becoming real power brokers. You don’t need to admire either of those men to appreciate the destabilizing effects they’ve had on the American political order. In a word, it’s no longer orderly. The gray eminences of the major parties are losing control; they can feel it slipping from their hands. And their response has been, in part at least, to whip their allies among the Poans to greater efforts at chastising us who dare to depart from their prescriptions.

     Will the wardens of the order succeed in putting down those who’ve dared to defy them and it? We shall see. For my part, I take more than a little amusement at the rising frustration audible and visible among our Poans. As they shout, gesticulate, and grow ever redder of face, increasing numbers of Us the People shrug, dismiss them, and continue on.

Weariness

     There are days it all seems to be just “too much.” And a number of my DextroSpheric colleagues appear to be succumbing to it.

     Things are bad. Really bad. And a lot of good people have decided to laager up and hope to ride out the worst of the storm:

     I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

     We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

     [From Paddy Chayevsky’s screenplay for Network]

     If they hadn’t gotten that bad, there would have never been a Tea Party movement. But there was a Tea Party movement. Where is it today? Have you seen it lately? If not, consider the possibility that those good people, the sort that left their rallies cleaner than they found them, might have become weary and given up, too.

     A friend who owns a large spread on a mountain in the country, well removed from population centers and (from what he’s told me) relatively easy to defend, has suggested with increasing urgency that I purchase the vacant property adjoining his and move there post haste. He’s not the first to make such a suggestion; I’ve been encouraged to adopt such a course several times. (No, not by my current neighbors, thank you.) Given my age and declining health, it’s not something I could do without certain concerns...but I’m considering it nevertheless.

     I’m weary too.

---

     We’ve been supplied with ample evidence that our political class is determined to maintain its grip on these United States despite any and all resistance. Their assets include the powers of the federal government, its effective control over the state governments, and the collusion of the major media. The intensifying weariness of the private sector – Recovery? What recovery? We’re broke -- is nudging us toward a state of affairs other peoples have endured for centuries:

     “Oh hell, are you going to let that dame talk you into letting the richest country on earth slip through your fingers?” said Cuffy Meigs., leaping to his feet. “It’s a fine time to give up a whole continent—and in exchange for what? For a dinky little state that’s milked dry, anyway! I say ditch Minnesota, but hold onto your transcontinental dragnet. With trouble and riots everywhere, you won’t be able to keep people in line unless you have transportation—troop transportation—unless you hold your soldiers within a few days’ journey of any point on the continent. This is no time to retrench. Don’t get yellow, listening to all that talk. You’ve got the country in your pocket. Just keep it there.”
     “In the long run—“ Mouch started uncertainly,
     “In the long run, we’ll all be dead,” snapped Cuffy Meigs. He was pacing restlessly. “Retrenching, hell! There’s plenty of pickings left in California and Oregon and all those places. What I’ve been thinking is, we ought to think of expanding—the way things are, there’s nobody to stop us, it’s there for the taking—Mexico and Canada, maybe—it ought to be a cinch.”
     Then she saw the answer; she saw the secret premise behind their words. With all of their noisy devotion to the age of science, their hysterically technological jargon, their cyclotrons, their sound rays, these men were moved forward, not by the image of an industrial skyline, but by the vision of that form of existence the industrialists had swept away—the vision of a fat, unhygienic rajah of India, with vacant eyes staring in indolent stupor out of stagnant layers of flesh, with nothing to do but run precious gems through his fingers and, once in a while, stick a knife into the body of a starved, toil-dazed creature, as a claim to a few grains of the creature's rice, then claim it from hundreds of millions of such creatures and thus let the rice gather into gems.

     Say what you will about Ayn Rand’s views on religion; I don’t like them either. She wrote of what she saw developing, in the hope of warning the United States off a course guaranteed to result in disaster. It’s more than possible that she saw the future of this country, should we fail to discipline those who claim the privilege of ruling over us.

     Our problem is that Galt’s Gulch cannot be established on Earth.

---

     We’re in a bad way. No one dares to challenge Leviathan. The media are firmly on its side. There’s no salvation to be found in elections; the electoral system has been “re-engineered” to guarantee that the elite will “win” over all insurgencies. Thousands of tiny, isolated pockets of good men hunkering down, hoping that anonymity and silence will spare them the attentions of our political parasites, is no solution.

     Trump? Well, as a political kinda-sorta outsider, he could shake things up...if he were permitted to:

     RealTrueNews: "Is it fair to say that Silver is worried?"
     538 Source: "In a panic. Our business model is predicated on making liberals feel better about the election. Right now? It's a disaster."
     RTN: "So what are you doing?"
     538: "Well, we're changing the model for starters. There were a few hours when the server was showing the real projections and while traffic was pretty high, let me tell you, it was a melt-down politically."
     RTN: "What do you mean?"
     538: "Well, Nate's a liberal. No secret there. When he saw what was happening he flipped out. Had us look for bugs--something gone wrong--looking at the feeds. Of course nothing was wrong. Nothing had changed. Then he got on the phone with his people embedded with Q-Pac and Survey Monkey and PPP and all those guys--"
     RTN: "Wait--embedded?"
     538: "Huh? Oh, yeah--it's a big social club. The pollsters all work together. We have a Slack-room that's sharing all kinds of results and skews and all that. That's how we keep it all orderly."
     RTN: "Orderly?"
     538: "Sure--what? You think it's . . . random? Come on. Who do you think pays for the polls? People who want results. You're buying media. It's like ads or . . . I don't know. Like newspaper stories? You pay 30k for a poll of Florida, it says what you want."
     RTN: "But what about on election day?"
     538: "Oh--we drive it. You set the expectations ahead of time. It's called pre-loading. You'd be surprised how we can fine-tune things. Mass belief is powerful. The problem here is (a) not everyone plays nice. Fox is rogue. Rasumssen was . . . bad. They were doing real polling. Also, there's like a game of chicken. At the start of the cycle we do real polling so that everyone knows how they better buy in. This time . . . Trump just caught us by surprise. The impact was so big--it came on so fast--Hillary just collapsed."
     RTN: "What--what happens next?"
     538: "I don't know, man. There are a bunch of smaller groups out there doing real polls. I don't know if anyone can keep this under wraps. They had to talk Silver off the edge of the building yesterday. It was bad."
     RTN: "He was literally going to throw himself out a window?"
     538: "Yeah--he was--well, but we're on the second floor. He was just really pissed. I mean, he got a call from the White House telling him to fix it and shit."
     RTN: "Wow."
     538: "Wow is right."

     But let’s not allow ourselves to view “good news” too optimistically. “Confirmation bias,” don’t y’know. It could be “disinformation,” too. Can you really trust in the veracity of a statement emitted by someone ensconced within the political orbit? And let’s always remember that “It doesn’t matter who votes; it only matters who counts the votes”...and that process is firmly in the hands of the political elite.

     It’s enough to make you weary...maybe weary enough to give up.

---

     There’s always hope. (I’m a Catholic; we’re expected to maintain that.) But the forces arrayed against us—those who understand and love freedom—are very large, completely ruthless, and disinclined to “play fair.” They control the horizontal and the vertical. They will tell us only what they want us to hear – and they’ve mastered the two most effective techniques for deception:

1. Tell “just enough” truth – then shut up.
2. Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it...but tell it so unconvincingly that your audience concludes that you must be lying.

     (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein.)

     Yesterday, I spoke of the unwisdom of ever trusting in a government or its minions. Individuals earn one another’s trust by their conduct. So also with governments...and dare anyone say that the federal government of these United States has done anything to earn our trust?

     The core of our malaise problem is that things are so far gone that few of us can imagine even the possibility of improvements. I’ve just written 1700 words about the instruments that have created your weariness. I know them well; I battle them, and the weariness they engender, daily.

     If it’s unwise to trust in “our” government, too daunting a task to overthrow it, and impossible (for the moment) to escape it geographically, we must trust one another.

     We must build up the molecules of safety, security, and social harmony: families and the communities they constitute.

     Do you trust your spouse? I hope so. But many married persons don’t. There are a host of reasons, these days. Don’t give him any of them.

     Children are inherently trusting until they realize that they’ve been deceived or betrayed. Accordingly, conserve your child’s trust in you: never lie to him, and never lead him to believe that he will (or might) get something he wants when there’s even a minuscule possibility that he won’t. The first phrase to be excised from your vocabulary is “We’ll see.” To you, that means “The possibility exists.” To him, it means “Yes, I’ll give it to you if you’ll just wait a moment.” Don’t bother to dispute the semantics; children are naturally inclined to hear what they want to hear. (Aren’t you?)

     What about your neighbors? Do you trust them? Would you be willing to leave your neighbor free access to your home while you’re on vacation in a distant place? Time was, that was normal; people left spare keys with neighbors as a matter of course. What about today? Are you willing to let your neighbors know that you’re in violation of some unjust law – say, a law that offers them a bounty for snitching on you? And when you think “my neighbors,” how far from your front door does the phrase reach?

     These are the areas where we can do useful work – work that promises a positive return.

---

     The above is something of a ramble. I write about what’s on my mind, and for quite a while what’s been uppermost on my mind is this pervasive sense of weariness. It can be beaten; there are no indefeasible enemies. But one must know the proper strategy and tactics.

     Weariness of the sort that impels one to “give up” is best combated with success: i.e., the undertaking of an effort toward a positive end that actually achieves that end. If we can’t control the course of events nationally, or at the state or county level, we have better possibilities close to home.

     I don’t claim to have all the answers. I’m a writer, not a Twenty-First Century Nostradamus. (Besides, he was wrong about a lot of things, too.) But I know what’s possible to men of good will who refuse to accept defeat.

     With that, I shall throw the floor open for comments, suggestions, criticism, and braying laughter.

The Most Awful Day: The Wherefores

     A few Gentle Readers have written to ask why I’ve made a habit of reposting this somber piece every August 6. Surely, they contend, anyone who reads Liberty’s Torch, or its predecessor Eternity Road, will have seen it by now. The history will be familiar to all. So what’s the point?

     Yes, I agree: the typical Gentle Reader of this pile of pixels will see “The Most Awful Day,” shrug, and pass on. “He’s at it again,” they’ll think. “Probably has nothing else to write about.” In truth, I almost always have more to write about than time to write, but that’s not the crux of the thing.

     Zeppelin L-Z, and all the civilian-sector-bombing missions over the century that followed, were dispatched by governments. Every civilian life ever taken by civilian-sector bombing was taken at the orders of a government. Despite the long-agreed rules of civilized warfare codified in the Geneva Conventions and elsewhere, governments have routinely decided to spill civilians’ blood as a measure during the prosecution of a war. Why?

     To answer the question “Why,” it’s sometimes helpful to look first at “Why not.”

---

     I wrote two years ago about the 1648 Peace of Westphalia:

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

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

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

     Note that the motivation for the abovementioned forbiddings wasn’t moral but practical. Governments do not respect moral constraints.

     When in 1914 the German Empire inaugurated civilian-sector bombing, it did so after calculation: specifically, that the practice would be an aid to winning the war. It tossed aside the Westphalian and Genevan constraints that had limited combat’s perils to acknowledged combatants for what it deemed a tactical advantage. Other governments soon followed in its train.

     Yet to this very day, the great majority of Americans – indeed, the great majority of First Worlders – persist in trusting governments and believing the statements of politicians.

---

     There’s my answer to the original “Why,” Gentle Reader. To remind you, and anyone else who might come into brushing contact with this site, that governments are amoral constructs unbound by any constraints other than force. Mohandas Gandhi put it best:

     “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.”

     There is an escape hatch. Yes, it would be temporary...but for as long as it might last, men would be free – and untroubled by the deeds of governments or the prattlings of those who seek to rule others. And warfare, with all its unrestrainable horrors, is the best of all reasons to consider it seriously.

     I contend that “Why” requires no other answer.

The Most Awful Day, 102nd Anniversary

     [This piece first appeared at Eternity Road on August 6, 2005. Today being the 102nd -- yes, the 102nd -- anniversary of the day I deem “most awful” in post-Industrial Revolution history, and a number of geopolitical trends having bent in the direction of large-scale replays thereof, I felt it appropriate to repost it. -- FWP]

---

     On August 6, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, it's your Curmudgeon's habit to reflect on the terrible decisions that led to that event, and to ponder whether any of them might have been made differently if their makers had had foreknowledge of the things that we of this time have experienced. He's done so before, and will probably do so again.

     But not today.

     Quite a number of commentators have characterized August 6, 1945, when the Enola Gay killed Hiroshima and 130,000 of its mostly civilian residents, as the most awful day in the history of the world: the day humanity exhibited both its ability and its willingness to annihilate itself in toto. It was an awful day, to be sure, but not for that reason. As of that day, we did not have the power to destroy ourselves that completely. Nor do we have it yet today, the dire mutterings of darker souls notwithstanding.

     It was an awful day because, in the opinion of President Truman and his key advisors, the atomic bombing of a Japanese city was the least bad of the available tactical choices. Every other means by which they might force the Japanese to surrender had a higher total casualty figure attached. One, the amphibious invasion of the Japanese Home Islands by American troops, had been estimated to produce a million American deaths, to say nothing of how many Japanese would have died in the fighting.

     There's no way to revisit that crucial moment in history and supply those decision makers with the foreknowledge of the next sixty years. Even if one could, there's no way to know whether it would have made a difference: in the decision they reached, or in the relative quality of the six decades since then. All one can say with certainty is that it was an awful day indeed, one we would certainly have averted if a less awful alternative had presented itself.

     But what, then, was the most awful day? If Hiroshima doesn't take the trophy, what human atrocity could?

     Opinions will vary, of course. Some will go by casualty figures; others by broader and more inclusive metrics. Some will argue that calamities other than wars ought to be included in our considerations; others will reply that Nature is indifferent to human concerns, and that only Man's inhumanities to Man should qualify for condemnation.

     Your Curmudgeon's angle on the matter is, as you might expect, an unusual one.

     The Biblical story of Genesis, which your Curmudgeon considers allegorical rather than a literal narration of Creation and the Fall of Man, speaks plainly yet powerfully of the deed of Cain: the archetypal murder propelled by that deadliest of sins, envy. Note that, by the Biblical account, the Fall was an accomplished fact. Man had already been exiled from Eden. Many an analyst would say that Cain's deed was therefore inevitable; once separated from Divine guidance, someone had to be the first to spill human blood. The use of Cain, the allegorical first child of a woman's loins, as the protagonist in the story merely emphasizes the immediacy of the peril in which Man had placed himself by the Fall.

     That approach to the event has considerable substance. Once Man had been removed from the realm of the eternal and unchanging, all possible changes, both for good and for evil, impinged upon him. Murder was only the most dramatic.

     Shall we look forward in time, then? He who considers the number of deaths to be the most important measure would look to the genocides of the century past, or to the deaths of millions in our mass wars. These were genuinely horrible, doubt it not. But to your Curmudgeon, comparing the heights of mounds of flesh tends to miss the point.

     The history of Man's political and moral development records many fits and starts. Some of these are shrouded behind thick veils of time, such that we of 2005 cannot be certain how many persons, or which nations, were affected by them. But we can be reasonably certain about the Enlightenment and the moral revolution it ignited, for it remains with us today. Indeed, as our contest with the savageries of Islam should illustrate, Enlightenment concepts of rights and justice remain the most powerful and critical moral propositions known to our race.

     The wars of pre-Enlightenment Europe were as savage as anything of any other time, our own included. Armed men regularly targeted and slew the unarmed when it suited them to do so. What differed was the technology available. To deal death, one had to employ personal skill and exert muscle power, which limited the amount of carnage a single man or a single army could wreak. But there can be little doubt that, had the weapons of now been available to the warriors of then, they would have used them without scruple. The moral level of the time was too low to expect otherwise.

     With Enlightenment moral philosophy and the associated political concepts came a great change in warfare: the conviction that the destruction of war ought to be limited solely to those who elected to participate. As those concepts permeated the nations of the West, many of the ancient practices of war -- enslavement, rapine, looting, the slaughter of non-combatants, the use of non-conbatants as cover or "human shields" -- were put under the cloak of the forbidden, to be scorned by decent warriors and punished by them as they were discovered.

     The West saw two centuries of steady improvement in the moral constraints on warfare. Battles came to be ever more regular, ever better confined to a designated, delimited field of conflict. Many battles were actually scheduled; meeting places and times were agreed upon beforehand between the contending forces. Statesmen and thinkers looked forward to a time when death itself might be banished from the battlefield, as an obsolete practice irrelevant to true contests of strength and virtue between the governments of civilized lands.

     Until one terrible day in August.

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

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

     The date was August 6, 1914.

     That, to your Curmudgeon's way of thinking, was the most awful day. The day a major Western power, nominally committed to individual rights, the rule of law, and the norms of civilized warfare, threw all of that aside in hope of imposing its will on the government of another land. The day the line between combatants and civilians was erased.

     That line has not yet been redrawn. Perhaps it never will be.

     No material advantage can compensate for the sacrifice of a principle. An inflexible, inviolable principle is a safeguard against villainy, a shield behind which ordinary man untouched by the irrationalities and passions of others can conduct peaceable lives in whatever degree of comfort they can contrive. But once a principle has been violated, it protects no one. Often the first violator is ultimately saddest of all over its loss.

     We stand ninety-one years down the river of time from that most awful day. America, braced by its unmatched military power and technology, has regained its grasp on the principles of civilized warfare, but the forces we face have no interest in the notion. It would be a high irony if, having clambered so painfully from the pit of Hell Mankind excavated with the mass slaughters of the century past, we should once again unlearn all virtue under the tutelage of our Islamic foes. It would be an irony to defeat all others if the lesson should eventuate in their complete effacement from the Earth.

Istmatics DownUnder: A Report

     The Istmatics – i.e., those who attempt to enforce political correctness by calling those who dare to tread outside its bounds “racists,” “sexists,” “ableists,” “homophobes,” “Islamophobes,” and so forth – at times seem to be everywhere. It’s not just an affliction of the Land of the Formerly Free. Our Southern Hemisphere cousins are equally afflicted:

     It's a dangerous world in which to speak your mind.

     To quote from June's Economist: "From the mosques of Cairo to the classrooms of Yale, all sorts of people and groups are claiming a right not to be offended ... A right not to be offended implies a power to police other people's speech."

     I have often commented on our overly sensitive and easily affronted society especially, it seems, if the offending speaker is an older white male, yes, like me. But not exclusively. Ask Germaine Greer or Chrissie Hynde.

     In the past unreconstructed dinosaurs could often be relied to make prats of themselves over gender and race issues but now everyone is on notice. The boundaries are shifting daily it appears, and being educated, smart and hip doesn't make you less of a target.

     Read the whole thing. I know nothing about commerce or academe in Australia and New Zealand, but from the examples columnist Martin Van Beynen presents, we “unreconstructed dinosaurs” are in as much difficulty there as anywhere in the United States.

     The entire tempest is about the Left’s assertion of a privilege to police all speech and other forms of expression. They strive to eliminate “crimethink” by social ostracism, commercial boycott, and occupational consequences. However, Van Beynen’s assertion that this makes it a “dangerous world” for us “dinosaurs” actually misses the point:

The danger lies in conforming – in giving the Istmatics what they want.

     Every time anyone submits to the Istmatics’ “police power,” they become stronger. They can only be broken and put down by scoffing at them. That’s why whenever I’m accused of any of these various sins against political correctness, I own it – “Damned right I am!” – and cheerfully flip off the accuser. As Istmatics are cowards by nature and will never personally attack their targets, it’s the only approach that preserves some modicum of social peace.

     There are days I feel like strolling around wearing a sandwich board. On the front:

     And on the back:

     Yes, it would cause talk, but that’s the point!

Munications

     Do you municate? That is, do you shout your opinions, theses, and conclusions into the world but do your damnedest not to hear divergent views?

     A lot of people are like that, you know. It’s at the core of the “safe spaces” and “microaggressions” nonsense. Eric Hoffer would diagnose it without hesitation.

     I had a coworker, some years ago, who was full of political opinions he’s bestow upon you free of charge – indeed, whether you’d asked for them or not. But you differed with him at your peril. He’d reflexively label anyone who might disagree with him as a “fascist” at the top of his voice. In consequence, sensible persons who saw him coming would swiftly find somewhere else to be. He was the sort of municator I have in mind.

     It’s bad enough when individuals do it, but ultimately that sort of munication reduces to mere noise. It’s usually not difficult to shut it out, or at least walk away from it. It’s much worse when institutions do it. Some intriguing thoughts on the subject:

     We are saturated with media. Young people have no frame of reference so they just assume it has always been thus, but our modern mass media culture is one of those rare things that is truly new. It really was not so long ago when it was easy to be entirely uninformed about the world. It took great effort to be well informed. That’s not to say we are all worldly cosmopolitans, but the world is literally at our fingertips. More important, media is everywhere and it hard to escape it.

     This newness means that the people in charge have struggled to put it to their uses. Buying off a few newspaper publishers was easy. Controlling the three TV networks required hardly any effort at all. A free wheeling mass media with millions of bloggers, podcasters and small outlets is a different task. Rounding up the farm’s bull is a hard job, but rounding up all the barn cats is actually much tougher. The former can get you killed, but the latter has a maddening number of variables.

     When the masses started to get on-line, the “media experts” said it was ushering in an era of wonderfulness because the people would now have a say. The news would be interactive! It was not that long ago when every Progressive commentator went on and on about the wonderfulness of interactive media. I used to laugh at it as I was on-line long before the media airheads had heard of the internet. I knew those hothouse flowers would not last very long in the rough and tumble world of the internet, but like missionaries headed off to the jungle, they were sure it was going to be great

     I was thinking about that yesterday when National Review announced they had been taken over by Facebook. Like a lot of these sites, they learned the hard way that their audience was not going to just nod along and clap when instructed. Instead, they posted articles and the comments filled up with ridicule and criticism. That led to lots of comments from NR writers about the awfulness of the comment threads. Now that millennial pansies are in charge, they have turned it over to Facebook to police their comments.

     Read the whole thing. It’s worth your time.

     “Interactive media” that suppress the expression of divergent or dissenting views aren’t attempting to foster communications or build new levels of comprehension of difficult issues. They’re trying to replicate the hegemony of the three national networks prior to the rise of talk radio and cable television. Back then, CBS, NBC, and ABC would decide on The Official Line and broadcast it to Us the Unwashed without any trace of dissent. We could accept it or turn off the television.

     When blogging arose, complete with the ability of readers to insert comments on what they’d read, I thought a breakthrough was imminent. Individuals would at least have the ability to argue with one another from a safe distance. Ideas would be tested as thoroughly as possible. We’d have a chance of assembling the insights and experiences of millions into new edifices of knowledge – a chance the munications of the previously dominant mass media had denied us.

     The ascendancy of dominant institutions on the World Wide Web – Facebook, Google, Huffington Post, National Review, and other major aggregators of news and opinion – has produced a state of affairs in which individuals’ conveyances of facts and expressions of opinion can again be filtered and tamed – i.e., communications can be displaced by munications while maintaining a pretense of genuine intercourse. While the managers of those institutions don’t agree on everything, they do share a common attitude: We know best. Sit down, shut up, and listen.

     To allow one’s worldview to be shaped by an institution that methodically suppresses dissent from its preferences is to surrender all claim to an individual perspective or opinion. Yet such institutions are gradually winning a stranglehold over the Web. Small voices such as the few genuine bloggers that remain are the sole alternative. However, we’re dwindling in number. Many of the originals have ceased to write. Few with true courage of convictions have stepped forward to replace them.

     I’ve long held that “opinions are like assholes; everyone’s gotta have one.” I certainly have my own set, and I’m not shy about expressing them. But I also maintain that until your opinions are so solidly backed up by real-world evidence that there’s no significant possibility of error, you must be willing to listen to those who disagree politely. The price of not being willing to listen is high. First, you forget how to argue for your positions. Second, you insulate yourself from evidence that might persuade you to alter your stance. Third, in the worst case you’ll become a “true believer:” a worshipper in “a compact and unified church” that will have its own agenda – an agenda that’s unlikely to care much about you or yours.

     Municative institutions are such churches. It’s best to stay away from them. Any representation they make about valuing your opinion is for public-relations purposes only. They don’t want dissenters; they want disciples aflame with the faith who’ll defend it against heresy, no matter from what source.

     Food for thought.

Racism Report Part 2

     Sometimes the matter cannot be made clearer. Todd Starnes has the story:

     The distinguished writer Eugene Volokh first exposed this absurd story in the pages of the Washington Post. Here’s the back story:

     In 2014, a black government worker filed a complaint alleging he had been discriminated against by a coworker who wore a ball cap that bore an insignia of the Gadsden Flag.

     The aggrieved government snowflake “found the cap to be racially offensive to African Americans because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden.”

     The EEOC report goes on to identify Gadsden as a “slave trader & owner of slaves.”

     The overly-sensitive employee “maintains that the Gadsden Flag is a ‘historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.”

     The EEOC conducted a “thorough review” and found there was no evidence that the flag was created in a non-racial context.

     “Moreover, it is clear that the flag and its slogan have been used to express various non-racial sentiments, such as when it is used in the modern Tea Party political movement, gun rights activism, patriotic displays, and by the military,” the EEOC report states.

     You can almost feel the “but” coming, can’t you, good readers?

     “However, whatever the historic origins and meanings of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts,” they declared.

     This is why we’ve started seeing signs such as this one:

     We’re approaching a condition in which whites will find it necessary to re-segregate themselves, probably via zoning laws, restrictive covenants, and proprietary communities that will enforce them. No one with an excess of melanin will be permitted to enter such neighborhoods. There’ll be no other way to get away from black victimists, grievance-mongers, and their endless demands. When that happens, who do you suppose the blacks will blame for it? Surely not themselves; that would take actual self-awareness.

     I think I’m going to get a T-shirt made up:

     I’m sure I’ll enjoy the disapproving looks – and grinning right back at them.

Reducing The Pitch To Its Essentials

     I’d say whoever designs the sign outside the Grace Baptist Church could give a course in it:

     Now if only we could all agree on what “sin” is.