The Shelter Problem

     Yes, yes, I know you’re tired of hearing about Charlie Kirk’s murder and what’s followed. Sorry; it’s on my mind, and I write about what’s on my mind. You see, there are parallels between the situation that produced Charlie’s murderer and the ones that make both black predation and Muslim violence so rampant.

     The explanation starts with an insight from Brigitte Gabriel:

     I think I’ve embedded this video before, but never mind. Gabriel’s explanation of the sheltering character of a population that protects and enables its violent fraction is on point. When Mao Tse-tung wrote that “The people are the sea in which the revolutionary fish swims,” he had the same idea in mind. The larger mass of that population need not be violent. It needs only to provide concealment, protection, and sustenance to its violent members. That greatly increases the willingness of the violent to go forth and slaughter.

     When black or Muslim violence erupts, the rejoinder from the peacefully inclined among us is often “But they’re not all like that. We can’t punish all of them for the deeds of a few!” This response is so common that it’s generated an Internet acronym: NAXALT. And indeed, by American standards of justice that rejoinder is correct.

     But the phenomenon has killed the degree of mutual trust that made America the social, economic, and political envy of the world. When it’s unwise, for the sake of one’s own well-being, to trust in the good will of strangers, trust will disappear. And that is exactly what has happened.

     We cannot trust blacks.
     We cannot trust Muslims.
     Worst of all, we cannot trust those on the Left – and we have no reliable way of distinguishing them from the others around us. Any of them could be an assassin or an enabler of assassins. Any of them might cheer at seeing one of his fellows brutalize or kill us. The culture that shelters them has reduced the risk of those things to them.

     That has increased the risk to the rest of us.

---

     Retail establishments and restaurants are beginning to sense the dangers. Some have already gone to what I’ve been (mistakenly) calling a “kill box.” Properly, it’s a delayed-admission security entrance. Below is a picture of the sort of thing I’m describing:

     The outer door is unlocked. The would-be entrant steps inside. The inner door remains locked against him until a security guard can decide whether he should be allowed to pass into the establishment. If the answer is no, he can proceed no further; he must leave.

     The “kill zone” where the would-be entrant must wait is of course transparent. It can be made as large as the proprietors think appropriate for their application. The walls are usually made of Lucite. In the future they may be made of armor glass, given how many guns there are in the world. I know of one such retailer, a furrier, who has already imposed such a control on his potential customers. He won’t be alone for long.

     Such controls, openly designed to separate dangerous elements from the rest of us, are a stopgap solution. They can only protect enclosures; they cannot protect public places. With Muslim violence and black “chimp-outs” becoming more frequent and more widespread, the long-term solution can only be a complete, enforced separation of the populations, such as this. Popular sentiment won’t yet support that, but time will tell.

---

     Trust in the good will of strangers is a social requirement. The loss of it atomizes us, as it’s doing today. An increasing percentage of Americans are unwilling to leave their homes to shop. They fear what may await them. Many such have ample justification. (Say what you will about Jeff Bezos, but thank God for Amazon.)

     Do you hate the idea? I do. But anyone with a better idea, a better vision for restoring public peace and amity is welcome to present it. In this regard I must hope that there are keener eyes than mine... though I’ve seen no evidence to that effect.

Rearguard Actions

     There may be no creature on Earth lower than Jim Acosta. You may remember his interminable badgering and hectoring of President Trump during his first term. Trump showed more restraint at his antics than I would have expected, far more. He even managed to restrain himself when a court ruled that he could not, on his authority as the president, expel the troublesome tosser from the White House press pool.

     This might have been the supreme example of Acosta’s arrogance and entitled-ness: demanding that Sarah Sanders, then the White House press secretary, contradict her boss in public:

     CNN fired Acosta awhile ago, perhaps out of recognition that he was the opposite of an asset to their viewership and sponsorship. But one of his ilk doesn’t disappear quietly these days. (Cf. Keith Olbermann) He’s sought out alternative channels by which to pump his vitriol into the national discourse. And of course, as there are many today, he’s found one:

Jim Acosta: The real worry is the right’s “exploitation" of Charlie Kirk’s death causing violence.

CNN presented this loathsome, unhinged radical as an “anchor” for years:

“There's exploitation going on of his death and it's happening on the right and it's absolutely… pic.twitter.com/TqCvYIPhgY

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 11, 2025

     It would be foolish to expect Acosta to focus on the actual impact of the Charlie Kirk assassination. No, his bent compels him to look for a way to downplay the actual killing in favor of his political allies. So he trumpets that the Right is exploiting the atrocity!

     This is not something to dismiss with a growl. Acosta is something of a standard-bearer for his ilk. He may be the most obnoxious of them, but he represents their attitudes and preferences very well. His approach has already been adopted by other Left-aligned commentators in the mainstream media.

     That’s the Leftist approach to anything terrible their allies precipitate. They don’t reflect on causes and consequences. No, it’s always “Republicans Pounce,” or something to that effect.

     It’s been clear from all the open Leftist jubilation over Charlie Kirk’s death that the killing of an effective conservative activist gladdens their hearts. A few have actually said that they wish it had been their deed, rather than that of an as-yet-unknown assassin. Do we really need any more evidence that they’re at war with us? Real, flying-lead, take-no-prisoners war in which Charlie Kirk’s death is something to celebrate?

     Other conservative activists have been pondering whether they should adjust their schedules, perhaps take additional security measures. May God watch over all of them at every moment. It’s clear that the cream-pie phase of this struggle is over.

     As distasteful as it is, we must keep watch on the mainstream media and their favored mouthpieces. Yes, they’re wounded and falling back, but “a wounded lion is a lion still.” If the Acostan message – i.e., that what matters most about Charlie Kirk’s death is how the GOP can benefit from it – should gain traction, the national discourse will be twisted to their advantage yet again. It wouldn’t be the first time the reptiles of the Left have pulled the rhetorical rug out from under us.

A Declaration Of War

     Time was, wars were declared in formal notes, delivered by one nation’s ambassador to the potentate of another nation. Military operations waited until that note had been received and acknowledged. When hostilities did begin, they were often battles scheduled to begin at a particular time and in a particular place, with prior warnings delivered to any noncombatants in the area. Battles would often have mercy breaks, during which each side would collect its dead and wounded and care for them.

     Time was.

     I shan’t trouble my Gentle Readers with the tale of degradation that’s brought us to where we are. You may already know it, or some of it. Suffice it to say that nations’ warlike practices are no longer so civilized. The Geneva Conventions, noble attempts to return warfare to some degree of decency, are mostly honored in the breach, if at all.

     Today, wars begin with a military strike. “Oh, you didn’t know we were at war with you? Well, you know it now.” The attitude needs no analysis from me.

     That new “standard” applies to civil wars as well.

     Just in case you’ve been completely disconnected from national events for the past day or so, yesterday a sniper ended the life of Turning Point co-founder and popular conservative activist Charlie Kirk. A high-powered rifle bullet found his jugular from an estimated two hundred yards away. For a moment, it was a tragic, stunning shock, nothing more. Then the reactions and commentary from the Left began to accumulate: celebrations compounded with statements that “he deserved it.”

     It was barely possible to rationalize away Charlie’s murder as the deed of a madman, a “lone wolf,” before those reactions and comments began to appear. After that, it was no longer possible to interpret the assassination as anything but a declaration of war. Real war, the kind fought with bullets and bombs.

     The Right has been muttering darkly about the possibility of a modern civil war for some time. We’ve never wanted one. We hoped we could restore the Constitutional order of the United States by argument, education, and electoral action. We failed to reckon with the emotional dynamics in this deeply divided country. We also failed to understand the two attempts on Donald Trump’s life as we should.

     Clarity has come.

     I could go into depths of detail that would sicken even me, but there’s no need. The matter is simple. The Left has lost at the ballot box. It has lost the national argument. It has lost the emotional allegiances of decent Americans. Its back is to the proverbial wall. Its remaining choices are surrender and violence – and the Left never surrenders.

     War is upon us.

     We don’t get to say “No, we don’t want this,” and end it that way. We don’t get to stand back and hope it will happen somewhere else, to someone else. We don’t get to declare a personal armistice and live our lives quietly while others argue over the terms of the peace treaty. We don’t even get to buy peace by surrendering. We’re in Israel’s position now: every one of us in the Right is on the front lines.

     Charlie Kirk was targeted because of his effectiveness, but even more because of his openness. He wasn’t a supreme commander, any more than was Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was a high-value target, but nevertheless a target of opportunity.

     Other conservative speakers and public figures are on notice. But then, so are we all.

     I wish I could end this on a positive note, but there aren’t any positives to the thing. The Left has declared war on the Right. The violence will continue. It will probably escalate. More people will be maimed and killed.

     There’s no predicting the outcome. The Right has been too determinedly civil. We’ve never accepted the absoluteness of the contest. We’ve proceeded as if the contest could and would be settled by argument alone. But our adversaries will not accept defeat by that standard. They won’t stop short of anything but total power over all of us: the power of life and death and everything in between. Why should they not go to guns when the national discourse and the electoral contests turn against them?

     It’s August 1914 in America. The next few days will reveal much. For now, pray for our country. And clean and oil all your guns, of course.

Matt Walsh Goes Part Way (UPDATED)

     It cannot be made clearer than this:

Time for MASSIVE change in America
pic.twitter.com/IyUpNRHB2e

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 10, 2025

     Note that Walsh is unsparing about the grisly reality of the crime. Note that he is unequivocal in condemning the mainstream media’s desire to turn the attention away from the crime and onto “conservative racism.” But note also that he shies back from the conclusion that the statistics he cites would force upon any of us: i.e., that whites cannot and must not have blacks among us.

     The black race is incompatible with the white race. Yes, some of its members have adapted to the norms of the advanced civilizations whites have built. But generation after generation, young black males have reverted to the norms of the jungle. When they do, their forebears fail to restrain or discipline them. Whites are left to clean up the mess... and, to add insult to injury, to hear ourselves denounced for “racism” for daring to notice the obvious.

     It is no longer possible to believe, after all these years and all our efforts, that the black race can be rendered safe for civilized society. The “not all of them are like that” deflection must be dismissed with prejudice if whites’ lives and property are to be protected.

     In a different context, Ronald Reagan asked pointedly, “If not now, when? If not us, who?” Those are the questions of the hour. The subject is different, but the urgency is just as great.

     What awaits us should we delay further will be too grim to bear.

     UPDATE: Don’t think for a moment that other blacks aren’t wholly behind Decarlos Brown Jr.:

I really hope @dbongino and @FBIDirectorKash know about these things. https://t.co/IyiK9vrp8a

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) September 10, 2025

     Young black men lap that stuff up. It’s their license for doing whatever they please to the rest of us.

     They must go. Even if it takes the imposition of martial law and a “Two Doors” scenario, they must all go. Where, I don’t know or care.

Enemies

     Do you have enemies? If you believe so, are they known to you individually? If not, by what criteria do you identify them?

     I’m not talking about board games, Gentle Reader. An enemy is someone who would like to see you come to harm. The nature of the harm need not be physical, though that would certainly count.

     The crime statistics suggest that there are a lot of people out there doing harm to others just now. In a great many of those cases, the “harmers” don’t know the “harmees.” Not as individuals, that is. They choose their targets by other criteria.

     Crime statistics can tell us a great deal, but they don’t elicit the kind of horror or passion for vengeance that the murder of Iryna Zarutska has awakened. Yet this, according to all we know, was an impersonal crime. The murderer was not acquainted with the victim. They had never previously encountered one another. Neither had said a word to the other before the killing took place.

     Individual crimes seldom evoke mass movements or large shifts in public opinion. Even utterly vicious killings don’t usually have that effect. A gang that knocks over a convenience store, killing a clerk in the process, is usually just treated as one more dreadful statistic. Until the statistics are studied for patterns, that is. Then the game changes.

     The murder of Iryna Zarutska had a special quality. The mass media were aware of it from the start. They could sense the kind of avalanche in public opinion it would loose. So they declined to cover it. Their explanation? “Just another local crime story.”

     When the media finally did deign to mention that murder, they tried to make it about – what else? – race and politics.

CNNs reaction segment tonight about the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska tonight was to express sympathy for the suspect and harshly criticized social media pundits.

Van Jones decided to weigh in, criticizing @charliekirk11 due to alleged racial hate mongering.

He claimed that… pic.twitter.com/6i2LPK6sTF

— Media Lies (@MediasLies) September 9, 2025

     Reflect on that for a moment while I put up another pot of coffee.

---

     I could go in a dozen directions about this, but you’ve probably read my other tirades about the race war in progress, so I’ll spare you that set of rantings. No, today my focus is on the mass media.

     We’ve known for quite a while that the media are boughten allies of the Left. Journalism attracts the Left-inclined ab initio, for reasons I’ll address some other time. Leftist activists and politicians have had great success at seducing journalists into supporting and promoting their causes. But above all, the media have been most useful to the Left in embracing and promulgating the Left’s narratives.

     Leftist politics requires that certain narratives get traction. The most prominent of them has been the oppression narrative, particularly in matters of race. The notion of ongoing race-based oppression probably matters more to the Left than any of its other themes. Therefore, its allies in the media must take care:

• To cover any event that can be framed so as to lend support to the notion that whites oppress blacks;
• To refuse to cover, or to minimize or distort, any event that leans in the opposite direction.

     Some time ago, I wrote:

     Word gets around. Something as atrocious as the rape-torture-murders of Christian and Newsom cannot forever be kept from the light of day. People talk: policemen, forensic investigators, neighbors, reporters, reporters' clerical assistants, cleanup specialists, garbagemen, the families of the victims, their neighbors, and their neighbors' kids. There's simply no hope that the story won't sooner or later be told. When it is told, after a long interval of silence, people will naturally ask one another, "Why haven't we heard anything about this before now?" They will suspect conspiracy.
     It's easy to suspect conspiracies, and difficult to disprove them. Conspirators are secretive by nature, seeking always to conceal or disguise their identities and deeds. Successful conspirators are well prepared to deflect the blame for their crimes onto wholly innocent others. With this as the model, one who begins to suspect that he's being deceived has a long, hard road to travel to disabuse himself of the notion.
     Journalists who downplay or conceal inter-racial crimes out of the mistaken notion that they're helping to avert further hostility are either deluded or hopelessly stupid. By furthering the conviction among private citizens that we're being lied to, they advance the concomitant conviction that "the other," about whose deeds we're being denied full and accurate reports, really is someone to be feared...someone to be located and destroyed, or cast out of our midst, for our own safety's sake.
     Thus, whatever their conscious motives and intentions, politically correct journalists who spike stories about horrific crimes by black perpetrators are the new segregationists. It is their decisions about which stories should be emphasized and which ones must be buried that will persuade white Americans that their black neighbors cannot be trusted and must be expelled from the body politic.

     An insistence that reality must be shoved aside – denied or suppressed – to make way for a counterfactual narrative is the height of delusion. Word gets around. The supposed purity of the deniers’ motives cannot hold back the tide.

---

     Most Americans first heard about the murder of innocent white woman Iryna Zarutska by black multiple felon Decarlos Brown Jr. on X. For the first two days after the event, the media wouldn’t say a word about it. “Local crime story” was the rationale. But the “coverage” that followed gave the game away.

     White Americans are angry now. Angry enough to do what? Perhaps not angry enough to start lynching the blacks around them. But they’re angry at the media, for sure. The media have revealed themselves as our enemy.

---

     During the 2002 war to depose Saddam Hussein, a lot of jokes were cracked about Iraqi information minister “Baghdad Bob,” who was known for denying every report of American advances against the regime. One picture, in particular, became commonplace:

     Baghdad Bob’s behavior is easy to understand. He was working for Saddam Hussein. He had to serve the interests of the regime or lose his job... and quite possibly his life. There was no reason to doubt where his allegiance lay.

     But the mainstream media claim to work for us. It’s become all too clear that that is not the case. The media are enlisted in a cause that threatens our very lives. In advancing that cause, they repeatedly deny the reality of events. When that’s no longer possible, owing to independent journalism, they strive to obscure the causes and the implications. Shall we impute to them the foreseeable consequences of their actions?

     Draw your own conclusions.

Foresights and Golden Ages

     “I have praised the past, the present, and the near future with all the insight God has given me. Peering into the farther future, I have seen nothing but obscure and terrible things which it is not in me to praise. So it is certain that I have fulfilled my task, and may now rest.” -- Olaf Stapledon, Odd John

     Have you ever felt that way?

     Yes, it’s going to be one of those mornings.

***

     Though little known and appreciated today, Olaf Stapledon was a giant of early 20th Century speculative fiction. His novels Star Maker and Last and First Men are considered seminal to the science-fiction field, though there’s little of scientific or technological speculation in them. Both of those, and Odd John quoted above, display a height and breadth of imagination few modern writers have equaled. Yet his tales were notably pessimistic, even fatalistic in tone, whatever his personal inclinations may have been.

     It seems that in some sense, Stapledon recoiled from his own imaginings. The monk Langatse into whose mouth he put the words at the top of this piece certainly didn’t like what he foresaw. Of course, one can always suppose that was purely for fictional purposes. Whatever the case, an Englishman who lived and served through World War I can be forgiven for a bleak view of existence.

     Old men often acquire such a view, even if they’ve lived in a golden age. Age can do that to you. It’s born from a dislike of change and a sense of impotence.

     Ours may someday be recalled as a golden age, even if many alive today would not agree.

***

     I’ve often thought it a blessing that we cannot see the future clearly. I think it would conduce to a fatalism that would be difficult to overcome. Think of the records of those cults that believed that they could see what was coming. Did any of them end well?

     A major benefit of Christian faith is its optimism. Though he can control little of what happens in this world, the Christian believes that he can control his own fate in the life to come. It’s entirely up to him; no other force, personal or impersonal, can take that from him.

     One who disbelieves in the life to come doesn’t have that balm for his temporal wounds. This life – indeed, the present moment – is all he has. If he’s a news junkie, the effects can devastate him beyond recall.

     Christian or not, immersion in current events is not good for us. It leads to foresights, whether accurate or inaccurate, that darken the soul. That so many of us are so immersed does not bode well.

***

     What can we make of developments such as the ones in Britain and Australia today? Is it not clear that a time of trouble is coming for those nations? If we turn to America, where much that’s in progress parallels the course of events in those other lands, does the future look any brighter?

     When a decent man confronts a story such as this one:

0 AP stories on this deadly attack
0 PBS stories on this deadly attack
0 NYT stories on this deadly attack
0 NPR stories on this deadly attack
0 WSJ stories on this deadly attack
0 BBC stories on this deadly attack
0 CNN stories on this deadly attack
0 WAPO stories on this… pic.twitter.com/962qmFOBNm

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 7, 2025

     ...it takes a mighty effort to turn aside from the rage and horror it induces. The same is true of the multitude of stories about racially and ethnically motivated attacks on innocent individuals. Most of those attacks are by groups of blacks on individual whites. The determination required to turn away from the fury produced is enormous. Some don’t manage it.

     Even those who do manage it experience a change in demeanor. No matter how pleasant or peaceful one’s own existence, the specter of all-encompassing violence that can strike anyone, anywhere, at any moment darkens one’s vision. It’s certainly darkened mine.

     It’s among the biggest of the influences that’s draining our benevolence from us.

***

     Yet having said all the above, I can’t go on to say don’t pay attention to the news. The news often tells us what we need to know as individuals. It’s the foresights that result from news immersion that wound us.

     Many alive today know a prosperity and security that no previous generation has experienced. (Yes, even those of us who still have day jobs.) One reaction to the torrent of reports of ugly events is to isolate ourselves, shut out the noise – to wrap ourselves in our personal circumstances, pull them tight around us. Howard Beale described that reaction in Network:

     “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.’”

     Others become frenzied, and strive to build a fortress against the threats. Still others are filled with hatred and fury. And some simply give up.

     Those are the consequences of too dark a foresight.

***

     A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved. -- Robert A. Heinlein

     I have no idea what state of mind Heinlein was in when he wrote the above, but I suspect it had some elements in common with mine at this hour. I have a misty vision of Western society’s near future, and it is not pleasant. I have a somewhat more solid vision of my own future, which is more agreeable. For I am one of the fortunate ones; I enjoy a “personal golden age.”

     I could, should I choose, “turn off the news” and simply enjoy my own circumstances. I’m often inclined to do so. After all, I have plenty of food, clothing, wine, living space, diversions, and entertainments. (And guns.) I could take refuge in those things, pull them tight around me, and ignore the general descent into chaos and squalor. I could easily justify doing so.

     But I don’t. I keep track. And on this eighth day of September in the Year of Our Lord 2025, I can’t say exactly why. Yes, it gives me plenty to write about, but what other good does it do?

     So I’ll end this morning’s ramble with a question:

     Is it the course of prudence to strive to remain well informed, or is it folly to concern oneself with what’s beyond one’s power to redress?

     Have a nice day.

The Return Of The Unacceptable

     Consider this episode, which has “gone viral:”

A Phillies fan retrieves a home run ball for his son and this woman is furious she did not get the ball pic.twitter.com/kDMMJrw2R5

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) September 6, 2025

     There has never in the history of the National Pastime been a rule, formal or otherwise, that when a baseball lands in the stands it belongs to the person nearest to it. The woman who raised a stink about getting to it late had no grounds for doing so. Yet she got away with her brazen display of entitlement.

     Her behavior falls into the category decent societies categorized as “not done.” It should not have been tolerated. It certainly shouldn’t have gained her a souvenir baseball.

     Herewith, a reprint from 2022.

---

“Not Done”

     Historically, much that is not illegal by statute has been restrained by an unwritten social code. Nineteenth Century England, the closest approach to a classical-liberal polity in Europe of that era, had extensive codes of that sort. Because English society was stratified by class, there were several such codes, which included rules by which Englishmen interacted within their class and with members of other classes. Indications of this come through in the fictions of the time. John Galsworthy’s magnificent Forsyte Chronicles are probably the best example.

     As the early United States was largely populated by persons of English descent, some of those codes made their way across the ocean and took root here. For a while you could hear Americans condemning certain kinds of behavior, actual or proposed, with the classically English phrase “It’s just not done.” The associated social opprobrium had a degree of force contemporary Americans – and contemporary Englishmen, for that matter – can hardly imagine. (“Enforcement” by dueling had only a little to do with it.)

     Today there’s damned near nothing that “isn’t done.” The greatest imaginable outrages are performed shamelessly and in public. They who perpetrate them upon the rest of us do so precisely because they are outrages. The social codes that once restrained them no longer have force. They certainly aren’t respected by the outrageurs.

     Some of this is attributable to “anti-discrimination” laws, but a far greater portion arises from cowardice among better men.

     Yesterday evening, I cited the disturbance at Los Angeles’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels by pro-abortion protestors determined to disrupt Sunday Mass. The brief video embedded in that tweet depicts what occurs when a few good men find a scintilla of courage: enough, at least, to act against those who would ruin something precious to others. It was heartening to see...moderately so, at least. For I had to note a visible shortcoming: only a half-dozen of the Mass attendees rose to the occasion.

     Why so few? There was no physical danger involved. I can’t see how there would have been any legal consequences to forcibly expelling the protestors. Yet only a handful of Angeleno Catholics rose to oppose the desecration of a sacred Catholic rite that involves the Body and Blood of Christ. Where was the righteous anger appropriate in response to such a profanation?

     If we want such scurrilities to return to the status of “not done,” we’ll have to muster exactly such righteous anger – in quantity.

***

     The matter is grave. Such invasions of the prerogatives of others, even when nominally within the law, are massively destructive to the sense of social order and public peace. That, of course, is why they occur. The perpetrators want to convey exactly that message: “Give us what we want or you will know no peace.” It’s their mantra.

     What goes undiscussed is why such persons get away with their obscenities:

• It’s nominally legal for them to do so;
• The rest of us do nothing but wring our hands.

     But the law does not reserve unto itself the punishment of all infractions against the social order. It cannot. What’s done that’s “not done” must be punished by those offended by it – and by punished, I mean the infliction of actual pain, embarrassment, and ostracism.

     Minority groups determined to disrupt our lives, our gatherings, and our rituals will only get away with such behavior for as long as it fails to draw retaliation. We the Decent Majority must impose consequences so painful, embarrassing, and isolating that no one will be minded to repeat the offense ever again. Moreover, we have to be imaginative about it, for any tactic too often repeated can be countered, given time.

     Imagine if those protestors at Our Lady of the Angels had been stripped bare, spanked to a bright red, and thrust out of the cathedral entirely unclothed. Possibly after having been figged, as well. And perhaps doused with a blend of caffeine and DMSO, for good measure. Do you think they’d have dared to repeat their impertinence?

     Of course, preparation would be required, but that goes without saying.

     Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? “Not done!” But what lesser measures would ensure a return to public peace? The organs of the law either have no authority in such matters or refuse to use what they have. This is what is left to us.

     Other commentators have spoken of a “cold civil war” in progress. Their perspective grows more applicable by the day. The Left has delved deeply into the “not done,” confident that We the Decent will not respond with more than words. When only one side is willing to fight, the outcome is foreordained.

     The explosions of outrages in recent years have made this Curmudgeon yearn for “the good old days” when such violations of the public peace were constrained by the possibility of being challenged to a duel. Unfortunately, when dueling was accepted, women were regarded as immune to challenge. Perhaps the custom could use a spot of innovation.

     Have a nice day.

Necessary But Not Sufficient

     A graphic that’s been making the rounds of the Net has been much on my mind lately:

     That’s awfully good advice. I’d say those practices are necessary for long-term health and comfort in one’s body. But his body’s needs aren’t the only ones a man must meet if he’s to have a complete sense of well-being.

     A man is not his body alone. His soul has requirements of its own, above and apart from what’s required for physical health. Even a hard-core materialist will have a sense of this. He might use the term fulfillment rather than anything that smacks of the mystical, but the sense of needs that transcend the physical will be there even so.

     (“Fulfillment” had its heyday back in the Seventies. We don’t hear it as much these days. Nevertheless, it’s on a lot of minds, especially with the rise of the tradwife evangelists and the furor they’ve evoked among militant feminists.)

     Each of us needs a sense that he’s doing – or done – something worthwhile with his time on Earth. Without that, physical health and fitness are mere baubles that will be buried alongside you.

     That may be a strange thing to have on one’s mind at 5:00 AM EDT, but you know me, Gentle Reader.

***

     What’s required to feel that you’re doing, or have done, something worthwhile? Are there life paths that greatly improve the chance that you’ll sincerely believe it?

     That is one hell of a long-term study, Gentle Reader. It goes back to Socrates and Aristotle. The arguments over it have never ceased. They probably never will.

     Aristotle, for all his brilliance, had to approach the subject from the back end: happiness. He sensed that the traditional virtues were connected to happiness, and prescribed them emphatically. Even so, his argument was teleological: i.e., that living a virtuous life will make you happy. It left open the question: what if you live a virtuous life from cradle to grave, but find that you’re not happy? And indeed, there have been men whose lives have been absolute paragons, but have been unhappy throughout.

     This is not an argument for eschewing the virtues. It’s merely a demonstration that teleological arguments are always vulnerable to a teleological challenge. You may labor diligently for many decades at cultivating and practicing the virtues, yet not attain happiness.

     Time gives no refunds.

***

     I’m not about to claim that I have the answer. This is an early-morning ramble from an old man, Gentle Reader. Don’t read too much into it. But it does suggest something about what direction would be most profitable to follow.

     Happiness and the sense of a life well lived don’t have to be regarded as prizes awarded solely at the conclusion of life. They can be immediate: concomitants of the awareness that at this moment in time, you’re doing what you ought to be doing, and doing it right.

     I’d hope that every man has such moments. They may not last long, but they can bring a sense of purpose fulfilled: “I was there and I did my job,” whatever “my job” might be. They do something else, too: they speak to the desire for meaning that each of us feels: the yearning to believe, sincerely, that life is not a purposeless accident. That’s not a need that can be satisfied by any physical nutrient.

     I may return to this later on. For the moment, I need more coffee. No, it’s not sufficient, but it is necessary. Thank You, God.

Vacua

     It seems that for some kinds of learning, you have to get old.

     I’m old. I’ve lived 73 years as of the fifth of September in this Year of Our Lord 2025. And I sometimes thank God that I can’t clearly remember the foolishness I espoused in my younger days. I’d die of embarrassment if some of it were to come to light. And that’s enough for personal disclosures.

     I was educated as a physicist. I’ve retained very little of that knowledge. I couldn’t solve a Schrodinger’s Equation problem to save my life. But I did hold on to one critical insight. It’s one you probably acknowledge, too, even if you would express it in other terms.

Excepting the effects of entropy,
The universe is ruled by equilibrium.

     Practical living incorporates that insight in particular ways: “The goldfish will grow to the size of the bowl.” “Water seeks its own level.” “Dirty is automatic; clean takes work.” “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

     That last one is much on my mind this morning. No calculus will be required to follow it out.

***

     Experimenters create vacua for specific purposes, often to gauge the consequences of a reaction that cannot occur in air. Vacua are also required for certain types of high-tech manufacturing. But have you ever contemplated the production of vacua by activists and politicians? Why would they do it?

     (Before we proceed further, yes: the plural of vacuum is vacua. The alternate plural vacuums is best reserved to the discussion of floor-cleaning devices.)

     Nature abhors a sociopolitical vacuum just as much as the physical kind. Indeed, a sociopolitical vacuum is often paralleled by a physical one. Both demand to be filled by something. All it takes is time.

     Now consider what’s happened to birth rates in the First-World nations. I don’t know of any advanced nation other than Israel that’s reproducing at or above replacement rate. Without an influx of immigrants, those countries would “empty out” within a few generations. The effects are already visible in Russia and Japan.

     Those declines in fertility don’t create a hard vacuum... but they indicate a reduced pressure within the affected countries. The pressure against their borders is higher than the pressure to maintain racial, ethnic, and cultural norms can resist. Moreover, there are elements within those countries that want a flood of immigrants, regardless of any countervailing considerations.

     Those pro-immigration elements have effective control of the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

     Yes, movements have arisen in all those nations to agitate against unrestricted and unqualified admission to their lands. But to this point, the pro-immigrant elements in their governments are holding sway. It’s unclear whether the balance will tip in the other direction in the near future.

     I’d bet against it, because of a cooperating vacuum that’s been under construction for several decades.

***

     Moral and ethical norms are best inculcated in the young person by his parents. Should they fail to do so, he might manage to acquire them in some other fashion, but he’d likely give and receive a lot of pain and damage in the process. Some of that damage would be to his beliefs about individuals’ rights.

     For decades the trend in Western nations has been away from firm moral-ethical norms and toward a freewheeling relativism: “whatever’s right for you.” Parents have been swayed in that direction as much as anyone else. But relativism acts like a vacuum. Under the guiding principle of “whatever’s right for you,” even a nation whose heritage is strongly Christian will lack the will to defend Christian norms against an incursion by an aggressive and confident opponent.

     Relativism synergizes with the reluctance to confront – an unwillingness to risk conflict, even if it’s just verbal conflict. The relativist will not argue for any absolute norm. How can he? Under the relativistic principle, there are “no right answers.” Everyone is entitled to “his own truth.” But a time may come when someone else’s “truth” mandates the relativist’s subjugation or death.

     That’s what’s happened to Canada, Britain, and Australia. It’s beginning to raise its head here in the United States. The great majority of Americans are at least nominally Christian. Our Nation’s laws were founded on Commandments Four through Nine of the Decalogue. But we have exhibited an increasing disinclination to take up cudgels in support or defense of Christian norms.

     Those norms will not prevail without a stouthearted defense. Their adversaries’ numbers are growing while ours are stagnating. Do the math.

***

     My personal conviction is that Islam is toxic to human life and must be destroyed root and branch. I feel similarly about the tide of Negro savagery that’s manifested in recent years, most notably in the larger cities. But underlying those threats to Christian-Enlightenment civilization are the vacua of relativism and non-confrontation. Those vacua will be filled by something. It behooves us of the Christian Enlightenment to be ones to fill them.

     Time is not on our side.

Issues

     Have you noticed? No one has problems any more. No one has a character defect that demands correction. And no one is ever irritated. Instead, we have issues.

     Issues, they say, are for “working out” – and you know how hopeless it is to argue with They. Of course, there are better and worse means of working out an issue, but we wouldn’t want to be judgmental, would we? Each to his own vision of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful!

     Except that some of them are pretty damned ugly, aren’t they? Especially the ones that involve rape, murder, and rioting in the streets.

     I’m a long-time admirer of Mark Steyn. There’s hardly any other commentator in the Right who equals his gift for unsparing penetration. He’s especially good at coining a pithy phrase. I have several of his books, and that pattern of penetration married to eloquence persists throughout.

     But by my lights, one of his coinages stands above the rest. He made it in America Alone, in discussing the evil that has striven to displace national pride, patriotism, and love of justice: multiculturalism. He called it “societal Stockholm Syndrome:”

     If Islamist extremism is the genie you’re trying to put back in the bottle, it doesn’t help to have smashed the bottle. At the core of multiculturalism is the assumption that a non-Western culture is somehow primal and immutable, but that an advanced nation is no more than the sum of its parts. It’s a kind of societal Stockholm Syndrome—a desperation to identify with anything that comes along other than your own.

     That appears to have become the dominant approach to multicultural “issues” throughout Europe. Muslims think it’s just grand to kidnap and rape white European teen girls? Muslims force their own pre-teen daughters into marriages to much older men? Muslims harass Jews in public places, sometimes with violence? Well, it’s okay in their homelands, so who are we to condemn it? Besides, we wouldn’t want them to become angry with us, would we?

     I have an issue with that. So did this young woman. But it appears that few of her countrymen share that issue.

     Remember the Nuremberg tribunals? No, I wasn’t there, and I doubt you were either. But the principle they established is one that deserves a lot more thought than it routinely gets. They ruled that there is a standard of justice above all political law – that the Nazi war criminals brought before them could not stake their defense on the laws of the Third Reich, but must be judged according to that supreme standard.

     Europeans who cower before the Muslims that have flooded into their nations are as culpable as any Nazi official who claimed that he was merely following the laws of his nation. They avert their eyes from vicious and savage behavior, preferring “tolerance” to being called “racists.” They permit those hordes to disrupt the public life of their countries, rather than assert their long-established norms. They shun all possibilities of confrontation.

     And it’s coming to America. Muslim street prayers designed to monopolize parks, impede traffic, and assert dominance. Muslim demonstrations against Israel in public parks and before public places. Muslims marching and chanting for sharia — in Idaho, of all places. And no one says a word, much less does anything to prevent or correct it. Even in districts where there are water cannons and snowplows aplenty.

     Do you have an issue with any of that, Gentle Reader?

A New Entry In The War Of Words

     As my Gentle Readers already know, a great part of political combat is conducted through clever (and occasionally not-so-clever) choices of rhetoric. That makes it imperative that we who love freedom stay informed about what new and incisive rhetorical weapons are being deployed.

     The Left has been considerably more adroit in its rhetoric than the Right. Consider its transition from “global warming” to “climate change.” Once it became clear that the Earth is not warming, its flacksters moved from the previous phrase to the current one. They made it the spearhead of a new attack: “Senator do you believe in climate change?” Some public figures were unprepared for the shift and handled it ineptly. A similar rhetorical shift is observable in the Left’s campaign against the right to keep and bear arms: from “gun control” to “gun reform” to “gun safety.”

     For a change, the Right has struck back, specifically with regard to the Left’s tendency to use recent tragedies as bludgeons against gun rights. The phrase that’s just made the news, courtesy of Braden Langley of Langley Outdoors Academy, is “coffin surfing.”

     Braden is one of the most articulate popular defenders of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. He’s been at it for a while and is conversant with all the Left’s gimmicks. This latest sally pertains to Leftists’ piling demands for gun control onto news of mass shootings. The meaning he gives to “coffin surfing” could not be more obvious, nor its impact more acute.

     Leftist ghoulishness about shooting deaths has been obvious for some time. The new phrase is a powerful blow against the psychology behind their tactics. Second Amendment defenders and other devotees of freedom should look for opportunities to use it. It lays bare the perversity that lies behind the Left’s habit of politicizing every tragedy that comes along. Leftists will cringe before its implications.

Money Mumbles

     If you haven’t been watching the open-market prices of gold and silver, I have two bits of advice for you:

1. Check them;
2. Don’t check them.

     Advice #1 is for those with sound constitutions. Advice #2 is for those who are prone to fret.

     The U.S. dollar may yet survive as a respected currency, but over a long baseline it’s not looking good. The experiment in planned inflation that’s been going on since 1913 has reaped a terrible reward. The gold-to-dollars and silver-to-dollars curves are beginning to go asymptotic. Given the availability of this data, I’ve begun to worry about mass disaffection from the dollar as a store of value. The more people notice the deterioration, the more people will notice. Then things get spicy.

     The dollar, like all fiat currencies, is sustained by faith: specifically, the faith of millions that dollars will continue to purchase what they need and want. undermined. Faith is a deposit of hope in the truth of a given proposition. Events can undermine faith. When faith in a currency is undermined, we have financial panics.

     With regard to financial panics, Robert Ringer quoted economist Gary North in How You Can Find Happiness During the Collapse of Western Civilization:

     When a majority of depositors become convinced that a majority of depositors have become convinced that a majority of depositors are going to try to get their money out simultaneously, a majority of depositors start trying to get their money out simultaneously.

     Why are all those depositors trying to get their money out simultaneously? Some have this reason: they can see that the purchasing power of their money is sliding ever more swiftly downward. Others have another: they see other depositors making mass withdrawals, and they suspect that those others know something they don’t. Those two motivations cause one another to accelerate. They bring about a panic.

     Underlying the panic is a loss of faith in the enduring ability of the dollar to store value.

     If a panic against the dollar is to occur in the near future, the availability of information that for many years was kept away from private citizens is the most likely trigger. The Internet has made that information freely available. More private citizens than ever before are making use of it.

     As always in an approaching-panic situation, being among the first to act will confer a large advantage. This site is about the promptest and most reliable provider of regular information about the money metals and their dollar values. I check it regularly. I’d advise you to do the same. (Don’t neglect copper!)

     Finally, for more of the whys and wherefores, review these pieces:

• The Nature of Money and Currency
• The Nature of Money and Currency Part 2
• The Nature of Money and Currency Part 3
• The Nature of Money and Currency Part 4

Conditioned To Deference

     Allow me to open this piece with a snippet from Frederic Bastiat’s great pro-freedom treatise The Law:

     [A celebrated traveler] arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks — armed with rings, hooks, and cords — surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders." A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull."
     "Stop," cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."

     Give that a moment to sink in while I start a second pot of coffee.

***

     The patterns that run through human history are of many kinds. Some are distinct and easy to trace; others are less so, even if they’re equally critical to the understanding of Mankind and his societies. I’ve harped on the political ones frequently enough to be sick of them... as you might be too, Gentle Reader. But there are others that require more patience and more perspicacity to tease out. One of them is exemplified in the Bastiat snippet above.

     Virtually all societies recognize a class of experts,distinct from other members. The expert is conceded certain privileges, even if they’re never publicly specified. One of those privileges manifests as a social predisposition in favor of letting him have his way, at least on subjects where his expertise is acknowledged.

     What’s insufficiently discussed in this regard is the expert’s predisposition toward intervention: his active insertion into the affairs of others, often contrary to those others’ preferences. In modern societies, the law has been shaped to put many experts’ prerogatives over those of the others. He gets to intervene in their affairs whether they like it or not.

     In some cases, private, non-expert citizens manage to resist the intrusions of even the most assertive experts. But they must fight a strong, socially reinforced current – the presumption that the expert knows best – to pull it off.

     Courtesy of N.C. Renegade, we have this instructive tale:

     The midwife's words hang in the delivery room air like a casual afterthought: "We'll just give baby the vitamin K shot now." Just a vitamin. Nothing more than what you'd find in your morning orange juice. The language itself is the first deception - calling a synthetic blood-clotting agent manufactured by Pfizer's subsidiary Hospira a "vitamin" transforms an industrial pharmaceutical intervention into something as wholesome as sunshine.
     In those first raw hours after birth, when parents are overwhelmed by the miracle of new life, the medical system strikes with practiced precision. The entire infrastructure - from the delivery nurse to the pediatrician, from the hospital protocols to the documentation systems - has been calibrated for this moment. Every medical professional in that room has been trained, not in the science of whether a newborn needs synthetic phytonadione, but in the art of securing compliance. They've learned to frame it as routine, to present it as universal, to make refusal seem like dangerous eccentricity.
     Murphy's father, one of the few who came prepared, discovered what awaits those who dare say no. After his daughter was delivered using vacuum extraction five times - creating a visible blood-filled sac on her head - the red-shirted pediatrician entered within three minutes. Not to examine the baby. Not to celebrate the birth. But to begin the assault. When Murphy's father cited the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit study showing only six deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding in five million babies over 25 years, with none occurring in hospital births where vitamin K was refused, the doctor didn't engage with the data. Instead, he turned to the mother: "Do you feel differently?"
     The pattern revealed itself through escalation. First the doctor. Then the nurse lecturing about irresponsibility. Then the NICU admission - not for medical necessity, but for "monitoring" a baby whose parents had refused the injection. Then the failed attempts to insert cannulas, the repeated heel pricks for blood tests. Strange behavior for medical professionals who claim the baby cannot clot blood properly. If she truly couldn't clot, why were they so eager to make her bleed?

     Please read it all.

     My purpose in citing this upsetting piece is to underscore the exercise of “medical authority,” to which we have been conditioned to defer. The physician is an expert: specifically, in neonatal care. He only wants “what’s best” for the baby, right? No physician would deliberately harm a newborn, would he? Surely we should let him do as he pleases!

     Maybe not. Quite a lot of “routine” medical interventions are anything but good for the patient. When the patient is a helpless infant, the odds of an uncorrectable error are much higher than otherwise.

     But as the cited article indicates, physicians and the like dislike to be balked. They become officious. They strive to convince you that if you don’t defer to their judgment, you’re committing a sin against your child. Sometimes they invoke the weight of the law. At other times, they perform what amounts to a kidnapping to get their way without your interference. They seldom suffer any penalty for any such action, while the parents of the newborn are often subjected to humiliating interrogations by “child welfare” bureaucrats.

     Fighting the pressure to defer can take everything a parent has. Should the law become involved, it could destroy the family. Their newborn might be taken from them, to disappear into “supervised foster care.” It happens more often than most people are aware.

***

     That’s just the medical aspect of things. Arrogant, brutally assertive experts are everywhere today. They all expect deference from the rest of us. Many are capable of enforcing their will with police assistance. And we, trained from birth to defer to “authority,” more often than not tend to go along as the easiest course.

     Give this a long think, Gentle Reader. How many kinds of “expert” have tried to contravene your will? Did you resist successfully? What were the consequences? I’d like to hear about it.

Dawns

     I can’t imagine a reason that you “should” know Evan Barker. She’s worked in left-liberal / progressive political circles for some time. That involvement recently soured on her, with unfortunate consequences.

     You see, Miss Barker committed a faux pas. She said something that made her friends and acquaintances – all left-liberal Democrats – doubt her fidelity to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Here’s the nub of it, in her own words:

     When I decided to go to the DNC in 2024, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ready to move on from politics completely, or if I’d find myself re-inspired. After I got home, I went to a dinner party in San Francisco, and when a friend asked me how the DNC was, excited to hear about it, I decided to say how I really felt about the party, finally unafraid to do so. “I’m not sure if I’ll be voting for Kamala. I hated the DNC.” I watched as a familiar expression of moral superiority began to spread across her face. “You’re saying that from a place of privilege” she chided me.
     A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life. The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted “joy”, the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech.
     I left the dinner party early too, heading straight home, where I made a selfie video airing my true thoughts. On August 24th, 2024, I hit upload, announcing to my meager following of sixty people, many of whom were former colleagues and friends in politics, that I wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris.

     Please read it all. It’s both eye-opening and heartbreaking.

     Miss Barker frames her decision in terms that we’ve heard from former Democrats before this: the party has “lost touch;” it’s “left its base;” and so forth. That treats the Democrat Party a bit too kindly, but it’s understandable: it also exculpates Miss Barker for her protracted association with the party. But as a certain writer I quote far too often wrote in a similar case:

     But it occurred to [Ransom] that this was possibly the first occasion in his whole life in which Weston had ever acknowledged himself in the wrong, and that even the false dawn of humility, which is still ninety-nine per cent of arrogance, ought not to be rebuffed—or not by him.

     [C. S. Lewis, Perelandra]

     So let’s be kind.

     The title of Miss Barker’s piece is most significant: “One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life.” Ruined her life? Really? But what happened?

     In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: “fascism doesn’t look good on you”, another said “why couldn’t you have waited until after the election?” The social ostracism has trickled out into my non political life, too. I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town.

     Those are all unpleasant and unjust consequences of her decision to disaffiliate herself from the Democrats. But properly regarded, they actually strengthen her case for having done so. A party whose members treat a departing member in such a fashion is diseased. It doesn’t represent anything that could be defended with reason and evidence. It’s a specimen of what Eric Hoffer called “a compact and unified church” – and outside that church there is no salvation.

     Miss Barker will surely reflect on that in time. So should we in the Right, for it shows us a pitfall we must avoid. Any of our fellows who announces that he’s moving to the Left should be treated courteously, however much we may deplore his decision. Political positions are not faiths, and political realignments are not some kind of secular apostasy.

Our Role In Times Of Darkness

     I just encountered the following awesome statement from Tulsi Gabbard:

God is love. The very essence of God is love. Therefore, during times of hardship, sadness, pain and suffering, we naturally and spontaneously take refuge in Him — in love itself — because we know in the core of our hearts that it is only the power and light of God’s love that…

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) August 29, 2025

     I beseech you: please, please read it all. Reflect on it. The simple truth contained in Tulsi’s words is the weapon that has brought down tyrannies.

     Hardly the sort of emission you’d expect from a politician, is it? Yet there it is. It says much that must be said – that needs to be said – if the madness that has come close to ruining the world is to be quenched. Then compare its message to the scorn high-profile Democrats and other leftists have poured on prayer in the aftermath of Robert Westman’s mass murder of Catholic schoolchildren.

***

     From our origins to our present time, Mankind has known evil. That’s not because we’re evil; we’re not. We’re what God made us: temporal creatures with individual desires and free will. In every generation there will be some who misuse their free will to prey upon others. A great part of the human struggle is to come to grips with evil when it manifests among us.

     Some have more ability than others to confront evil directly. Those of us who aren’t so equipped must do what we can: we must safeguard our characters and those of our children. When evil strikes, we must rely upon our understanding of our fallen state, and be prepared to explain it to our children.

     Prayer is critical at such times. Character is formed from a host of influences. Prayer – regular, humble submission to the will of a loving God – is essential to it. Children must be brought to the understanding that it’s not just a way of wishing for a new pony. To pray is to recognize our limitations. To pray is to say to the One who has no limitations, “Thy will be done.”

     But as Tulsi said in the tweet above, politicians and hangers-on who denigrate prayer will have none of that. They cannot defer to God without admitting to their own fallibility and limitations, which is anathema to them. Why else would the very idea that others are praying for love and understanding upset them so? What are they really saying in their scorn? “Don’t trust God; trust us!”

     Their vision, however misty, is of themselves on the throne of the universe. Their will, not God’s, as the determinant of all things.

     Once more, with feeling: Put not your trust in princes. (Psalms 146:3) Trust God. Trust in your conscience, for it is He who speaks to you through that channel. And trust in the words of the Redeemer:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

     I’ll probably be back later. Have a nice day.

Whither Britain?

     The courageous Mayah Sommers, who has been called “The Young Queen of Scots:”

This brave young lady was chasing off Muslim attackers from her sister.

Her name is: Mayah Sommers "Queen of Scotts"

Share it and let the world know. pic.twitter.com/0jh1jkbmAF

— Cynthia Holt (@Ghostofcynthia) August 26, 2025

     ...is still very much in the news. Mike Hendrix has some thoughts about the matter. So does el gato malo. Both are worth reading. And of course there are these irrelevancies immediately below.

     My thoughts this morning run in another direction: How did Britain fall this low? It’s worth a lot of thought, though I doubt it will get even a fraction of the thought it deserves.

     From anyone else, that is.

***

     Let’s have a little music before we proceed to the analytics – no, wait; I think the thoughts expressed below deserve to be part of the analytics:

Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the walls
We have to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all the suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take

     Many miles away
     Something crawls from the slime
     At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch

     Many miles away
     Something crawls to the surface
     Of a dark Scottish loch

Another working day has ended Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now looming in the headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache

     Many miles away
     There's a shadow on the door
     Of a cottage on the shore
     Of a dark Scottish lake
     Many miles away...many miles away...many miles away...

(Sting, “Synchronicity II,” 1983)

     Yes, I’ve used it before. It’s potent. It’s penetrating. It asks the same question I posed above: How did Britain fall this low? And it asked it forty-two years ago.

     Forty-two years before Synchronicity was released would be 1941: the year of The Battle of London. Britain was still in decent shape before the Nazi bombing campaign. It wasn’t as well off as the United States, but its economy wasn’t yet dismissible and its men included a fair number of actual men. The American-British alliance that won World War II’s Western European Front was powerful. It suggested that British men were still masculine, a force to be respected.

     But appearances can deceive. Britain was already sinking into the Slough of Despond. In part, that was because its economy hadn’t progressed as far as the American and German economies. In another part, it was because of the deaths of so many British men in World War I, up to then called “The Great War.” And in a third part, it was because of the sense that the ineptitude of His Majesty George VI’s government was responsible for Britain’s involvement in the new war that was devastating their homeland.

     The sense of having been battered by events and bad governance was already at work on the minds of the British. Popular will had begun to wane. When socialist Clement Attlee took the reins from the Churchill government, it received further “humiliating kicks in the crotch:”

     Attlee led the construction of the first Labour majority government, which aimed to maintain full employment, a mixed economy and a greatly enlarged system of social services provided by the state. To this end, it undertook the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries, and implemented wide-ranging social reforms, including the passing of the National Insurance Act 1946 and National Assistance Act 1948, the formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, and the enlargement of public subsidies for council house building. His government also reformed trade union legislation, working practices and children's services; it created the National Parks system, passed the New Towns Act 1946 and established the town and country planning system.

     There was no disguising the direction of Attlee’s program. He aimed to make Great Britain – soon to be renamed United Kingdom – into a socialist state.

     Nothing enervates a people as swiftly, or as thoroughly, as socialism.

***

     Other things must be sketched in for a complete picture: the rise of the trade unions and the accompanying violence; the deterioration of Britain’s “public services,” especially the NHS, from the administrative bloat and underperformance characteristic of a socialized system; the flowering of the various “rebel” movements: “punks,” “skinheads,” “rude boys,” and the like; the decline in marriage and fertility; the retreat from Christianity; the “brain drain;” the opening of Britain to unlimited immigration from the Third World; and so forth. Many causal threads are intertwined there. Suffice it to say that none of the trends that emerged after World War II favored the development of a masculine, self-reliant British man. He was being transformed into a villein.

     Villeins seldom rebel against their masters. They depend on those masters for far too much.

     Today, Britain’s “law enforcement” targets Britons who dare to resist the forces of depredation and degradation. Mayah Sommers was arrested for her courage. As for the multitudes of rapists and despoilers The State has allowed into the Sceptered Isle, they’re under official protection. Their numbers are still increasing, despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s declaration that immigration be slowed. The Muslims among them have become arrogant, publicly assertive, and impossible to discipline.

     Popular will is supposedly being expressed by Operation Raise the Colours. Yet those flags are being ripped down as fast as they’re put up. Who stands against that counter-movement? Who will stand against it? One might surmise that the flag-raisers are waiting for Mayah Sommers to do it.

     Talk is not enough to save Britain. Neither are flags.

     It’s been suggested, by Larry Correia among others, that American arms makers go to emergency production levels, and their output be airdropped over Britain. Yet British hoplophobia is so advanced that it’s likely that the airdropped weapons would remain untouched until “trained firearms officers” should arrive to “safe” them.

     A recent email from my dear friend Margaret Ball contained this gem:

     I've been reading a lot of British mysteries lately. The cultural differences are sometimes amusing. Recently, for instance, I read one which started with 3 chapters of the cops agonizing because they've learned that in a certain house in Leeds there may exist...
     A GUN!
     Leads me to suspect that if a bunch of British cops were suddenly transported to the US they'd have a collective nervous breakdown.

     Britain needs men. Have any survived Britain’s century-plus of degeneration? Or are they waiting for Mayah Sommers to lead her sisters and her neighbors’ daughters to save them?

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Chronicles Of The Death Cults 2025-08-28

     It’s been a while since I last touched on this subject. However, the processes in motion have remained in motion. They won’t stop politely to allow us to catch our breath. To misquote Robert A. Heinlein, since they don’t take long lunch breaks, neither should we.

     My dear friend and frequent commenter Pascal, in referring to yesterday’s emission, sent this:

     That Mayah was immediately arrested for brandishing a weapon is the most important lesson to be driven into thick, sheepish human skulls of the subjects of that decadent realm. The most influential seats of UK law-makers are occupied by even more deadly death cultists than the Islamists they continue to import and protect. These rulers are so passively evil and cowardly they don't bother bloodying their own hands. Instead they simply continue to write laws that are not only quick to condemn those who defend themselves or the vulnerable, but consistently remove all obstacles to, and any fear of facing justice by, active psychopaths.
     When the justice system is officially turned on its head in this manner, how much more proof is needed that the country's law makers are even more evil than the common criminal?

     This is an indirect swipe at a phenomenon that was once commented on by someone whose name I’ve forgotten. The essence of it was as follows:

The State demands a monopoly on violence.
Yet violent criminals are seldom prosecuted,
While persons who defend themselves violently
Often face The State’s wrath.
Therefore, the criminal is an agent of The State.

     In the United Kingdom, which seemingly grows less united with each passing day, this appears incontrovertible. It also applies to parts of these United States.

     Give that some thought while I fetch more coffee.

***

     This is a few weeks old. It’s on my mind today because of the “death cults” theme:

     This is not a parody. Two bioethicists have argued in the prestigious professional journal Bioethics that we should breed ticks to cause more infections of a condition that causes an allergy to red meat. Seriously.
Why would anyone want ticks to become more dangerous? Meat-eating is wrong, and so anything (apparently) that causes fewer of us to eat meat is “beneficent“:

1. Eating meat is morally wrong.
2. If (1), then eating meat makes people morally worse and makes the world a worse place.
3. So, people would be morally better and the world would be a less bad place if people didn’t eat meat.
4. If an act makes people morally better and makes the world a less bad place than it would otherwise be, then that act is morally obligatory. [Corollary of consequentialism]
5. Promoting tickborne AGS [a tickborne syndrome that causes a meat allergy] makes people morally better and makes the world a less bad place.
6. So, promoting tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

     “Bioethicists” -- ? How much would you be willing to bet that these... persons’ ethics stop short at ethical mandates such as “Thou shalt not kill,” eh? When “bioethicists” make statements such as “Life should end at seventy-five” (Ezekiel Emanuel) or “The elderly should not receive medical care” (Daniel Callahan), they forfeit any claim to being dispensers of “ethics.” They are death cultists, pure and simple.

     I could go on about this, but as I’ve done so before, and at length, I’ll spare you. Allow me one quick mention of my collection of essays on this subject, and I’ll allow us both to pass on to happier thoughts and climes.

     I may be back later. Stay tuned.

A Glimmer Of Hope

     A couple of days ago, something unusual happened Across the Water: A Briton dared to defend another Briton against the threat of rape by an immigrant.

     If you aren’t familiar with the details of the event, the defender was a 14-year-old Scottish girl named Mayah Sommers. The intended victim was her 12-year-old sister. The would-be rapist was from... somewhere else, probably the Middle East or Africa. Mayah protected her sister by brandishing a large knife and a hatchet at the immigrant. Apparently that was enough to daunt him, and thank God for that.

     The story is resounding throughout the U.K. I have no idea how much currency it’s achieved here or elsewhere. Young Mayah is drawing comparisons to Boadicea, to Joan of Arc, and to other courageous women known to history. She deserves as much praise as she’s received, and more.

     However, her courage has had other consequences, not all of which were easy to foresee.

     The one that’s drawn the most cries of outrage was Mayah’s immediate arrest for brandishing a bladed weapon. In emasculated Britain, that’s a criminal offense, and never mind the wherefores. The probability is high that popular sentiment will compel the dismissal of that charge, but as in all such things we must wait and see.

     After that comes the dawning recognition that the U.K.’s laws against even the most minimal personal armament – even carrying pepper spray is outlawed, barring specific police permission – are utterly insane. They amount to a license for the would-be predator to do what he likes to less aggressive and weaker prey. Horror at the idea that innocent Britons – men and women both – are forbidden to possess and carry the means of self-defense has taken a long time to ripen, but today it’s fully upon the Sceptered Isle.

     Third is the de facto position of The State: protect the predator from the consequences of his deeds, especially if he’s an immigrant, a Muslim, or both. Put baldly, it seems incomprehensible. Yet U.K. governments maintain that posture so consistently that one must infer that it was deliberately chosen. It lends weight to the suggestion that The State values the immigrants above the lives and well-being of native Britons.

     Fourth and last is the rising hope that some measure of masculine courage and native pride might be kindled in the larger British populace by Mayah’s actions. I must admit that I hope for that as well. Britain deserves better than to be Islamicized and removed from the brotherhood of Western civilization. But the odds are against it, for a simple reason.

Britons fear weapons more than their invaders.

     The technical term for a fear of weapons is hoplophobia. It seems endemic in the U.K. The suggestion, made by Larry Correia among others, that we should mass-produce and air-drop handguns to beleaguered Britons has been met with rejection by Britons themselves. They fear the consequences of mass armament more than what’s being done to them by the invading hordes.

     Robert A. Heinlein was adamant that a slave must free himself. What of the slave who prefers slavery to freedom?

     This saga may have a few more stanzas to run. Mayah Sommers is being hailed as a symbol of reborn British courage and defiance: a Mockingjay, if you will. Her example may yet galvanize what masculinity and defiance remain buried in the British soul. If it’s simply too ironic that a young teenage girl must teach those things to British men, then so be it. The Sceptered Isle needs her example too badly to quail at the disgrace of it.