Are we there yet?

In the 21st century, the federal government, in its quest to actualize equality, consumes (during peacetime) about ten times more of the American economy than it did a century ago. And yet economic inequality, in the President’s words, still amounts to “the defining challenge of our time.”

"No Man for Himself, And The Devil Take Most. American people vs. American government." By David Corbin and Matt Parks, The Federalist, 12/21/13.

Objectives And Constraints

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I'm feeling unusually philosophical this fine Saturday morning, which renders me reluctant-approaching-incapable of writing about the newsgarbage as I normally do. If you find what follows boring, or too high-flown for your tastes, just remember: it's only Saturday.

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"Know how to make God laugh? You tell him your plans." -- Origin unknown.

I employed that line in Shadow Of A Sword, to emphasize the inescapable uncertainties inherent in even a successful plan. The speaker, presidential candidate Stephen Graham Sumner, is troubled by the unintended consequences of his successful drive for the Oval Office. Sumner, a bright and knowledgeable man, is aware that every cause has more than one effect, and that there had to be "extra" consequences to his campaign than just the vote totals. Yet he finds himself edging away from his goal because of the violence his pursuit of the presidency has elicited.

(To my fiction readers: Yes, there will be future stories about the Sumner years. Hang in there.)

Those of us who make and chafe at unsuccessful plans -- i.e., everyone -- sing our laments in a different key, of course. But that's in the nature of Nature. We can plan; we can implement our plans; we can pursue them with all the force and skill at our disposal...but we cannot guarantee their outcomes.

The one thing it's within human power to guarantee is that we shall not do some particular thing, or some category of things. All else is subject to being overruled by the laws of Nature.

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Isabel Paterson was the first writer I encountered to enumerate these critical characteristics of Mankind:

1. Man is a rational animal, capable of inferring causal relations from his observations of reality;
2. Each of us is self-motivating and self-actuating -- i.e., our desires and decisions are individual;
3. Each of us possesses the ability to inhibit himself -- i.e., to refrain from an action, however desirable he might deem the rewards that might flow from it.

That third characteristic is the one on which I'd like to concentrate for the moment.

Why would Smith, who has conceived of a course of action that he expects would bring him some greatly desired reward, voluntarily refrain from taking that course?

• He might be too risk-averse to pursue it;
• He might doubt his own forecast of success;
• He might be uncertain that the reward is real;
• He fears unforeseeable unintended consequences;
• The reward would be accompanied by a loss of equal or greater magnitude:
• His conscience forbids it.

That last possibility brings us into the domain of ethics and ethical psychology, which makes it difficult to analyze by impersonal means. However, the others are bald recognitions of the inherent uncertainties of life under the veil of time. In effect, they concede the primacy of Natural Law, which operates continuously, offers no exemptions, and is indifferent to individual desires, opinions, and identities.

We cannot be certain that any positive course will eventuate in the outcome we seek, Only one certainty is granted us: that if we refrain from doing a particular thing, then we will not do that thing. A man's firm decision not to act cannot be overridden by any external agency.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "among these [rights] are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," that bit of wisdom might well have been uppermost in his thoughts. As Robert A. Heinlein observed in Starship Troopers:

And the third 'right'? — the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed inalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

All we can say for certain is what we will not do; all else is subject to the whims of time and chance.

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If our personal certainties are so limited, what does that make of our ability to plan and to execute our plans?

Only this: it demands that we be mindful of the possibility of failure. Given that that possibility applies not merely to a complete plan but to each step in such a plan, the farther forward we plan -- the more linkages of cause and effect we insert between our current position and our intended destination -- the less certain we can be of the outcome. More, every single action will have at least two consequences, at least one of which will be undesirable. (See the Second Law of Thermodynamics for a rigorous explanation.) Thus, when toting up the costs of a plan, those negative consequences belong on the debit side of the balance sheet -- and as they're normally just as impossible to be certain about as any other aspect of our plans, the element of risk will always be larger than we can foresee.

Though I've stepped through this evolution of thought as slowly and carefully as natural language will allow, the knowledge itself is something we grasp not by theorizing but from life itself. Indeed, one cannot lay claim to any degree of maturity without first absorbing it.

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If you simply must have a political hook on which to hang the above, it does pertain to the utter failure of nearly all government action. Governments, especially left-leaning governments, are obsessed with outcomes. They're forever telling their subjects about how this or that plan will bring about some desirable state of affairs. They're correct so seldom that the great question is why any half-bright human being ever takes their assertions seriously.

It's an old saw that you can always tell when a politician is lying: his lips move. If I exercise all my Christian charity and completely suspend my well-developed cynicism about men who regard themselves as worthy of wielding power over the rest of us, I can grudgingly allow that every eon or so, a politician who promises some rosy outcome from a proposed course in public policy might just sincerely believe it. He still won't be correct. Those who sincerely imagine that "social progress," however they define it, can be brought about by political action might lack mens rea, but the harm they do when allowed power will not be lessened by their warm hearts or their good intentions.

The ability to inhibit himself, humbly mindful of his fallibility and ethically constrained from doing harm in his desire to do good, is the most important characteristic a ruler could possibly possess. Our present agonies reflect how vanishingly rare such figures really are.

What's that you say? From the above I seem to be advocating anarchism? Why, Gentle Reader! Whatever gave you that idea?

Happy Winter Solstice.

The Beauty of Excellence and Voluntarism

Drawing by the author, done in art school from a live model, c.1979

Greetings rebels to King George and curious others...

 

What is it that brings tears of Joy to your eyes? Is it finding out you bought a winning lottery ticket? Hearing a favorite piece of movie music? Reading about a pivotal moment in history?

It happened to me once again last night, while watching an ad on YouTube - for a Volvo truck, of all things - and today I decided to figure out why.

Not surprisingly I’d searched for that particular Volvo original short after watching something else: the so-called Chuck Norris parody of Jean Claude Van Damme’s truck stunt. The computer created Chuck-short featured a retro Ken-doll Norris, of course in a cowboy hat. His beard looked sprayed-on and his face was as smooth as a 15-year-old’s. Yes, it was laugh out loud clever.

Then I tracked down the Van Damme ad (linked above). And was mesmerized. And teared up, like I said.

And now, a day later, I’m absolutely convinced that it hasn’t been seen by 62 million people. Nope, I’m betting it’s more like 6.2 - 12.4 million and like me, they’ve watched it five-to-ten times each.

Mesmerized - from the opening seconds onwards - by the haunting music of Enya…

Held by the still appealing though undeniably weathered face and poignant voice-over from Van Damme…

Amazed by this one man’s steely calm and still-unflagging athleticism…and lastly…

Wowed by the sheer beauty of the rising sun gleaming off the twin Volvo machines which so ably co-star with a real-life action hero. For what courage it must take to attempt such a stunt!

So…to the more subtle difference between the Chuck Norris parody and this original, and what I believe makes the former a video that elicits a chuckle and a grin and Van Damme’s one that earns a joyful tearing up and a lasting inward glow.

Aside from the fact the Norris video is fake, it is dependent on a show of State Force, albeit force wrapped not in the proverbial velvet-glove, rather wrapped in Christmas lights and pretty signal flares. Sure “Norris” also straddles two mighty machines, which for all I know could be held aloft by Volvo engines. But these machines are war birds of some sort, painted grey or grey-blue (and is it just me or does the one whose nose we see look to be smiling?). The planes and the soldier-heroes this video’s splitting stunt man singlehandedly holds aloft are State-trained, then retained, and finally, dispatched by the State for one purpose only: to do harm to someone or something it has deemed its enemy. In other words, They Live to Destroy. Not only that, but they do all this by means of stolen property, tax-dollars taken at gunpoint, albeit implied-gunpoint, by your friends and mine, the I.R.S.

Now consider the real ad.

Think of how that one-minute and seventeen-seconds came to be and think of what it embodies.

It’s actually very simple. There were no threats, no real or implied force; just a boat load of FREE CHOICES. Men freely choosing to develop excellent skills…and then businesses bringing those skilled men together with the raw-materials upon which they could apply their skills.

Together voluntarily, cooperatively, Volvo and Van Damme worked to create an excellent synergistic Physical-plus-Performance “product.” Volvo engineers voluntarily traded their time to design and refine the machines Van Damme was then carried atop; Van Damme himself voluntarily used his physical being; traded his time to train hard - not merely for this stunt, but to maintain his fitness over all these years - and then he voluntarily got up and stood on those magnificent truck’s mirrors, and was driven flawlessly - backwards and timed to perfection - into the sunrise.

Freedom to create Excellence. What could be more beautiful or more joyful?

Until next time, Keep Rebelling and keep creating, in whatever medium YOUR talents and skills are most excellently utilized!

No One Will Like This Piece

I don't watch Duck Dynasty. I watch very little television -- mostly Yankees baseball and New York Rangers hockey -- and I have no particular interest in life in rural Louisiana, even if the protagonists are Christian multimillionaires and devoted family men with prodigious shooting skills and extremely impressive beards. I'd much rather read...or write.

That having been said, let's get to the A&E / Phil Robertson dustup.

Whatever A&E's motives were in arranging for Phil Robertson's interview by "Gentleman's Quarterly," the Robertson family patriarch was unwise to accept it. "GQ" -- an Orwellian title for a periodical if ever there was one -- had a single, quite obvious motive for the interview: to denigrate the Robertson family and the lifestyle it practices. The interviewer was determined from the first to portray the Robertsons as idiots at best, repulsive backwoods bigots at worst. The audience to which "GQ" caters is heavily left-liberal and fop-friendly. It's guaranteed to view the Robertsons, their faith, and their practices with repugnance.

Phil Robertson appears to have the sort of nature to which Christians aspire, and which few of us manage to maintain in the face of temptation: that of a charitable and trusting soul who's unafraid to express himself candidly. That made him virtually ideal bait for the "GQ" types, who -- as with most leftists -- see nothing wrong with reframing a Christian's statements of belief to suit their own agenda.

As the saying goes, the subsequent uproar was "baked into the cake" in all its ugly particulars.

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A&E's suspension of Phil Robertson from the filming of Duck Dynasty involves the First Amendment's protection of freedom of expression in no way whatsoever. All the participants in this mess are private persons with an absolute right to freedom of association, including commercial association. The only limits on that right arise from contractual provisions to which the parties involved have freely assented.

(I don't give a BLEEP! what the courts have said about the obligations of wedding-cake bakers and photographers to accommodate homosexuals who imagine that they can actually marry one another. The courts are wrong, the homosexuals and enablers who cheer them on are wrong, and the whole sorry mess is just part of the approaching storm that will shortly tear this country apart. But that's a subject for another tirade.)

All that having been said, A&E has exhibited both extreme cowardice and poor judgment in its actions to this point. Popular sentiment is running heavily against the suspension. The Robertson family, which has already displayed considerable courage of conviction, might just pull the rug out from under the A&E network. That won't hurt the Robertsons at all, as numerous other outlets are openly slavering over the chance to host the most popular show on cable TV.

However, one element of this dustup about which I have inadequate information is just how important to A&E's finances is its backing by homosexuals and their enablers. Those communities of perversion and idiocy are overrepresented in the arts and communications trades generally, which is partly why they wield so much influence over what appears on TV. Besides, left-liberals have "taken one for the team" before, even when significant financial loss was involved. How this one will play out is something I cannot predict.

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The core issue illuminated by the A&E / Robertsons contretemps is the war being conducted against Christians, Christian living, and Christianity generally by the Left. In a country 74% of whose residents self-identify as Christians, you'd think the correlation of forces would make such a jeremiad unwise. However, there are other factors involved that significantly cloud the matter:

• The Left's disproportionate influence over the entertainment media;
• The homosexual-activist community's disproportionate influence over the Left;
• The federal government's cooperation with the homosexual-leftist agenda;
• The difficulty Christians have in mustering significant resistance to the attacks on them.

As the song goes, "They got the guns; we got the numbers." But numbers don't always prevail over firepower. Ask the Sudanese about the Battle of Khartoum...preferably from a safe distance.

Atop that, the Left has a powerful objective interest in extirpating Christianity, at least the public expression thereof, from these United States. Hearken to T. L. Davis on the subject:

There is a deep necessity of those on the left to abolish Christianity. Now, I would say religion, but that is not true. They are accommodating of almost any religion, even phony religions, but not Christianity. To them, Christianity must be banished from the public eye. All references to Christianity must be stricken from the record, banned from the schools, ripped from the monuments....

Is it that they (Marxists in general and their stooges) intend to obliterate, defame and denigrate our founders to make change that much easier? They have already done what they can to link them with slavery, with racism, with every evil under the sun. They speak of them as if they were doddering old, racist fools who clung to religion and guns just like our friends in Pennsylvania. "Old White Men". Why do they need to pretend that Lincoln, their hero, was not a Christian? He was not of a particular religion, but he was extraordinarily well versed with the Bible and could quote from it verbatim.

The whole reasoning behind the Revolution is undermined if God is taken out of government, because it is religion that founded this nation, gave it spirit, emboldened its revolutionaries and sustained them in the darkest days. Think of George Washington dropping to his knees and praying for his troops, for the survival of the new republic.

Any fight for liberty includes the right to practice religion, of any kind, freely, openly, without fear of reprisal by the government. In today's society George Washington would have been reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced by a more sensitive, diverse general, who would have promptly lost the war and everything could return to normal with the king.

Christianity is and has always been the stoutest of bulwarks against the encroachments of the Omnipotent State. By contrast, the other religions of the world are pillars of statism. Only Jesus of Nazareth dared to separate religion from politics -- "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, and unto God the things that are God's" -- and sin from temporally punishable crime -- "Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone." It's a great part of the reason why Caiaphas and his buddies on the Sanhedrin were desperate to see Him killed.

We in the Right often speak of the "intermediating institutions:" the organizations, practices, and traditions that stand between the individual and the State, helping us to resist its overreaches. Not one -- not family, not community, and not commerce -- is nearly as important as the Christian faith. Indeed, without Christianity, it's doubtful whether these other things could survive, at least in the forms to which we're accustomed. If I may paraphrase a famous atheist, George Bernard Shaw, Christianity is the idea that, put into a coward's head, turns him brave -- brave enough to resist subjugation to the last drop of his own blood, as many a historical incident will attest.

Left-liberalism is the Creed of Government Uber Alles. It knows Christianity to be its principal opponent in the all-important war of ideas. Therefore, Christianity -- all traces of it if possible; the public expression thereof if not -- must be destroyed.

If you're looking to fight in a war, there's no more righteous not critical battlefield than this one.

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As a writer of Christian-themed fiction and an outspoken Christian opinion monger, it should be obvious which horse I back in this race. That doesn't mean I'm confident of victory.

Millions have already rallied to Phil Robertson's defense. That's extremely heartening. But whether those millions will "hold the line" against the considerable media counterforces of the Left remains to be seen. Christians have all too frequently accepted a mess of pottage in exchange for conceding the public square to their enemies. We've grown far too comfortable with our public marginalization and exclusion.

As with the ultimate outcome of the A&E / Phil Robertson clash, whether it will be the falling stone that looses an avalanche of stouthearted reprisal against the enemies of Christianity cannot be predicted. For the reasons stated above, I am mildly pessimistic about the matter. Silence and deliberate disengagement have become habits for too many of us.

However the thing plays out, the Robertsons will not be harmed. Their "intermediating institutions" have served them well. They will not fail them at any time to come. The rest of us should draw the moral.

Be not afraid.

Assorted

Yes, yes, I know it’s neither Tuesday nor Friday, but...well...!

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1. More Than Coincidence?

Have a few monitory tidbits from Freedom Outpost:

#21 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

#31 If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#47 After accounting for inflation, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#48 When Barack Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks. Today, it is 37.2 weeks.

#63 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#82 Back in 1972, 46 percent of all Americans believed that “most people can be trusted”. Today, only 32 percent of all Americans believe that “most people can be trusted”.

We are being impoverished, made into clients of the State, and driven apart from one another -- simultaneously. Does it matter at all whether this is the intended outcome?

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2. Civility Watch.

Apparently, the newest Obamunist hire, John Podesta, doesn’t like conservatives or Republicans and doesn’t care who knows it:

Today, Politico confirmed that governing-by-executive-fiat is exactly what Podesta has in mind. The only shocking part of the story is Podesta's justification for shredding the Constitution:

In effect, I was told, it represents the clearest sign to date of the administration’s interest in shifting the paradigm of Obama’s presidency through the forceful, unapologetic and occasionally provocative application of White House power. Podesta, whose official mandate includes enforcement of numerous executive orders on emissions and the environment, suggested as much when he spoke with me earlier this fall about Obama’s team. “They need to focus on executive action given that they are facing a second term against a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of Congress,” he told me.

That's right. Obama's new counselor, the man in charge of saving his presidency, believes the Republican Party is a murderous cult and that this justifies Obama's extra-constitutional use of executive power.

Let’s have a few pictures of Podesta’s face with a crosshairs over it and see how he, his masters, and his buddies in the media react.

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3. Did You Really Believe It’s Just A Myth?

The 2012 presidential election wasn’t one of the very closest in American history – Hayes v Tilden was a lot closer, as was Bush v. Gore – but one side definitely did what it could to widen its margin of victory:

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced Wednesday that his office found 17 non-citizens illegally cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election -- and has referred the case for possible prosecution....

"I have a responsibility to uphold election law, and under both federal and state law you must be a citizen to vote," said Husted, a Republican who has aggressively tried to investigate voter fraud cases in his state....

As part of Ohio's efforts to clean up the voting rolls, election officials discovered that more than 257,000 dead people were still listed as active voters. Their names and status, Husted said, have since been removed.

In addition, election authorities note they have drastically reduced the number of duplicate registrations, from 340,000 in 2011 to just four this past November -- and that more than 370,000 Ohio voters who have moved have been contacted to update their voting information.

Remember that the federal Department of Justice, under that great American Eric “A Nation of Cowards” Holder, did its best to prevent the cleansing of illegitimate entries from the states’ voters’ rolls before the 2012 elections.

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4. Beware The Enraged Pansy!

When Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson said the following:

“It seems like, to me, a woman’s vagina would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me,” Robertson told the magazine. “I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

When the reporter asked Robertson what he found sinful, he said “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”

The self-proclaimed religious convert then went on to paraphrase Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

...many commentators noted that the Arts & Entertainment network, which is heavily supported by homosexual-activist groups, would be put under intense pressure to penalize him.

Well, looky here:

On December 18th A&E suspended Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson "indefinitely" for comments he made regarding his views on homosexuality.

The comments came during an interview appearing in the January issue of GQ magazine.

According to the Chicago Tribune, A&E released the following statement in response: "We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty."

Duck Dynasty is the most popular show on television today. You’d think that would lend its stars a certain amount of clout. Apparently those Panjandrums of Sodomitic Perversion, the American Association of Fudge-Packers and Meat-Smokers -- i.e., the homosexual-activist groups -- are stronger. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere.

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5. Stick To The Scripts You’re Handed, Sweetie.

Cate Blanchett is a gifted actress, a beautiful woman...and a complete and total air-head:

Cate Blanchett, who is paid a reported $10 million to appear in perfume advertisements, would like to discuss the sacrifices made by herself and other planet-saving celebrities:

We need to keep switching up the language around climate change. For so long we’ve talked about sacrifice and people get discredited for what they haven’t given up. [Celebrities] get criticised for taking flights, but the truth is someone like Leo [DiCaprio] takes fewer flights than he’s asked to. If we want it to stay on the radar, we need to focus on the fact there’s a lot of opportunity.

We truly do not appreciate their suffering.

Miss Blanchett is entitled to her opinions, but apparently she doesn’t have enough mental horsepower to recognize the damage her comments are doing to the very cause she champions. Well, if actors were brainy, they’d be quantum physicists, right? Right?

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That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.

What else do you want to know?

Breitbart.com: So, Obama’s mentor worked in communist fronts and activities with Valerie Jarrett’s father-in-law and grandfather?

Kengor: Precisely.

"Big Mentor: The Troika—Obama, Axelrod, Jarrett." By Breitbart News, 8/8/12.

Putting It All Together

Many are the mornings on which I awaken, grope my way toward rationality, and find myself wondering if I'll manage to find anything to write about that day. Yet few are the mornings that I don't look back on that passage of doubt with a certain rueful amusement.

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The brilliant Richard Epstein has written a must-read article on judges' "editing" of the Constitution. Epstein is notable among Constitutional scholars not merely for his penetration and erudition, but also for his facility for mating his legal and Constitutional knowledge to economic forces and the consequences they create from aspects of public policy. An example from his article follows:

Section 8. Clause 1. The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

This clause is a big deal because it remedies one of the major defects of the Articles of Confederation, under which the federal government had to beg the individual states for the revenues needed to discharge its own collective function. But in overturning earlier practice, the Founders were nervous about lurching too far in the opposite direction, so they limited the general power of taxation to three specified objects: “payment of debts, provision of common Defence, and the general Welfare of the United States.”

So it is important to understand that the clause is not a catchall that sweeps in every objective under the sun. Federal taxes are meant to fund only a short list of public—i.e. nonexcludable—goods that only the central government can provide. The Congressional power to levy taxes is needed to prevent free-riding by individual states. The limited purposes help prevent politically corrosive cross-subsidies between states that could sink the Union.

Epstein has detected a judicial edit: the reduction of the phrase "general Welfare of the United States" to merely "general Welfare." What follows is an example of proper, text-respecting Constitutional interpretation:

The proper interpretation of the clause raises thorny questions about whether, for example, the United States could provide disaster relief that benefits some but not all states. President Grover Cleveland thought that the answer was an emphatic “no” in 1887 when he vetoed the Texas Seed Bill, which allocated $10,000 for Texas drought relief. Under the Constitution, he did “not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.” Indeed, the vital element in this clause is that it prohibits any transfer payment from one group of individuals to another, as those cannot serve the “general welfare of the United States.” To see why, take the analogous case where a corporate charter allows the Board of Directors to adopt only those measures that advance the general welfare of the corporation. Without question, the so-called business judgment rule insulates corporate officers and directors when they work in good faith to advance the welfare of the corporation, and thus all its shareholders, in transactions with third parties. But it is a per se violation of that rule for the directors to tax one subclass of shareholders in order to pay dividends to a second subclass. All transfer payments among shareholders clearly violate their duty to advance the welfare of shareholders as a group.

I find myself thinking of a famous historical exchange: the one between Davy Crockett and Horatio Bunce. You'll find Epstein's elucidation of the Taxing Power clause mirrored in Bunce's sentiments.

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Following upon Epstein's article, we have this column from Nicholas James Pell:

December 5, 2013 was the 80th annual Repeal Day, AKA the day that Prohibition was repealed. It is the highest holiday for me and my coreligionists, the American Drunkards (Unreformed). Prohibition is widely regarded as the biggest mistake in American policy ever. It’s hard to imagine now—especially in Los Angeles, where there’s a head shop on every corner—but for 13 years, a rabid coalition of progressive puritan do-gooders successfully forced Americans to make do with bathtub gin.

Prohibition created organized crime and killed California’s nascent wine industry. Historians have largely written Prohibition’s history to serve its greatest proponents: the progressive crypto-Unitarian puritans who currently dominate public discourse. We are led to believe that rather than part and parcel of the progressive movement, Prohibition was a conservative folly, the solitary “move forward” from the past that we can all agree was a step in the wrong direction. This is a blatant falsehood: Prohibition was, through and through, part of a broader movement that sought to impose a hyper-Protestant post-millennialism on the rest of us who love wine, women, and song....

Mostly we’re left with the progressive puritan notion that the state has the right—nay, the duty—to combat evil wherever it might rear its ugly head in the world. We’re also left with a teleological concept of the American Republic wherein each subsequent generation is responsible for righting the wrongs of the last. Whether it’s raising the minimum wage or affirmative action, it is now an officially prescribed function of the federal government to make the world a better place. Sure, liberty is cool and everything, but isn’t equality a lot better, maaaan?

Still, Repeal Day offers a glimmer of hope through another historical lesson: It is, in fact, possible to turn back the clock. As 100 legislators from over 30 states gathered less than a week after Repeal Day to discuss passing the so-called Liberty Amendments—nothing that strikes so much terror into the editorial board of Daily Kos and Slate can be all bad—it’s prudent to remember that arguably the best Amendment to the Constitution was passed in just such a manner.

The repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment by the Twenty-First was indeed a joyous occasion, though the enormous damage it (and the previous two Amendments) had done to the nation was not completely reversed. (BATFE, anyone?) But even more significant than the Eighteenth's repeal was its passage in the first place: Congress admitted that to outlaw the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was not, by the Constitution as it stood, within its enumerated powers. Either the legislators of that time were more honest than those of today, or they were better restrained by external forces.

Chief Justice John Marshall, in McCulloch v. Maryland, wrote thus of the matter:

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent, to have required to be enforced by all those arguments, which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle is now universally admitted.

Unfortunately, he went on to write thus:

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional

...citing the Necessary and Proper clause as his rationale. Subsequent legislators and jurists have proved appallingly creative in their interpretations of "legitimate," "appropriate," and "within the scope of the Constitution."

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In a cri de coeur piece at Doug Ross @ Journal, financial executive Richard Larsen vents his displeasure over America's accelerating slide into tyranny at...conservatives!

When you think about it quantitatively, conservatives are mostly to blame for our current modified state of the union. How many conservatives refuse to vote if their candidate is not in the race, or are disengaged or oblivious to the destruction occurring around us, or do nothing, or say nothing, to preserve and protect our constitutional republic?

Conservatives have allowed this transformation to occur, by acquiescent reticence. I think no one has stated it more perfectly than Albert Einstein who said, “The world is a dangerous place not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Speaking out against this erosion of freedom is good, but it’s simply not enough, and it must be more vociferous and protracted. Too many battle among themselves for ideological purity, fight amongst themselves over the most efficacious political tactics, or just throw verbal stones at those whose destructive policies are morphing the country into something never intended, but then flame out before anything is accomplished. If they don’t bother to vote, don’t get involved in the process, and don’t try to make a difference electorally, and worse yet, are divisive to the conservative ranks, they deserve some of the blame for what is happening. Every conservative must do what he can, and most of all, to vote. If every conservative voted in every election, statists wouldn’t stand a chance.

Nonsense. Nonsense of the purest water, and a man as intelligent and accomplished as Larsen should know it. Conservatives are the persons most likely to vote in any election, biennial or quadrennial. Indeed, the Republican Party appears to bend most of its electoral effort into chivvying us to the polls no matter who it puts forward as candidates -- and we go. Energetically or dispiritedly, we go. The problem isn't conservatives; it's the candidates we're presented, most of whom are only cosmetically attractive.

Constitutional governance requires that the government remain within its Constitutional bounds. Tautology, I know. All the same, it's true -- so what are we supposed to do when Republicans, supposedly the sworn protectors of the Constitution and promoters of limited government, lie down before the Democrats' carriage, as they've done repeatedly since 1933? Vote them out and install a new set? Okay, we've tried that. Has it made a perceptible difference? Have the new legislators been any more faithful to their oaths of office than the men they displaced?

Yes, there are exceptions among the newest Congressmen and Senators. But "new" is a diminishing attribute. Few are the legislators who, after three or four terms in their seats, don't adopt the go-along-to-get-along / we-can-do-it-better-and-cheaper postures of the old boars. Their party puts the screws to them in numerous ways. The alternative to submission is often getting an actual job.

This was foreseeable from the day the Sixteenth Amendment was passed. Unfortunately, I wasn't around back then.

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Government Systems, acting in accordance with the laws of growth, Tend to Expand and Encroach. In encroaching upon their own citizens, they produce Tyranny, and encroaching upon other Government Systems, they engage in Warfare. -- John Gall, Systemantics

If there's truly a "quiet rage" accumulating among "silent" Americans, it has only two routes to follow: massive gastric distress or armed revolt.

Gall's citation of the "laws of growth" depends upon a theorem that cannot be proved but that's never been contradicted by evidence: That which is not growing is dying. Governments are like living organisms in that regard. They grow from the internal dynamic that animates all living and pseudo-living systems. Cyril Northcote Parkinson, David Friedman, and others have expanded on this phenomenon. There appear to be no counterexamples in the history of nation-states: governments grow until they collapse or are brought down by war or revolution.

A government that will not restrain itself, that perpetually ignores the plain text of its chartering document, that's staffed by persons who view ordinary citizens with disdain or worse, and that cannot be corrected by peaceful means will either flower fully into totalitarianism or be brought low by the force of arms. Just now, we're seeing the unfolding of the former process; the latter one appears nowhere on the horizon.

The Constitution of the United States was an attempt to countervail the "laws of growth" by formal and procedural means. To work, it had to be respected exactly as written. Indeed, the Founders were so precise in their language that the attempt to insert a semicolon where a comma was intended brought down censure upon the perpetrator.

Who in public office today would hew to that strict a standard? The Constitution worked reasonably well for about 125 years. However, as Herbert Spencer has noted, "Paper constitutions raise smiles upon the faces of those who have observed their results." All such charters require enforcement to be meaningful over a long interval...and with the sole, glittering exception of the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments, ours has gone unenforced since at least 1913.

The pieces of this puzzle are not numerous, Gentle Reader:

• Major parties controlled by untouchable kingmakers;
• A "two-party system" effectively protected by electoral law;
• Loose and tendentious construction of the Constitution by the courts;
• Congress's delegation of its lawmaking power to the "alphabet agencies;"
• Legislators and executives beyond the reach of peaceful means of correction.

It's time we put it all together.

UPDATE: A reader informs me that the link to the "semicolon episode" story no longer works. Here's another citation, though the author of that document says that he doubts that the story is true. Whether it's true or not, there's a comma where a comma belongs -- and you may be sure that the Founders would not have had it any other way.

Failurists

There are days it seems to me that the openly left-wing media such as NPR hire only commentators and prognosticators who have been certified incapable of understanding incentives. This remarkably myopic article is the latest evidence. Here's the bit that lit my boilers this morning:

...clans and families on Easter Island didn't fall apart. It's true, the island became desolate, emptier. The ecosystem was severely compromised. And yet, say the anthropologists, Easter Islanders didn't disappear. They adjusted. They had no lumber to build canoes to go deep-sea fishing. They had fewer birds to hunt. They didn't have coconuts. But they kept going on rat meat and small helpings of vegetables. They made do.

One niggling question: If everybody was eating enough, why did the population decline? Probably, the professors say, from sexually transmitted diseases after Europeans came visiting.

OK, maybe there was no "ecocide." But is this good news? Should we celebrate?

I wonder. What we have here are two scenarios ostensibly about Easter Island's past, but really about what might be our planet's future. The first scenario — an ecological collapse — nobody wants that. But let's think about this new alternative — where humans degrade their environment but somehow "muddle through." Is that better? In some ways, I think this "success" story is just as scary.

What if the planet's ecosystem, as J.B. MacKinnon puts it, "is reduced to a ruin, yet its people endure, worshipping their gods and coveting status objects while surviving on some futuristic equivalent of the Easter Islanders' rat meat and rock gardens?"

Humans are a very adaptable species. We've seen people grow used to slums, adjust to concentration camps, learn to live with what fate hands them. If our future is to continuously degrade our planet, lose plant after plant, animal after animal, forgetting what we once enjoyed, adjusting to lesser circumstances, never shouting, "That's It!" — always making do, I wouldn't call that "success."

People can't remember what their great-grandparents saw, ate and loved about the world. They only know what they know. To prevent an ecological crisis, we must become alarmed. That's when we'll act. The new Easter Island story suggests that humans may never hit the alarm.

[Link courtesy of Random Nuclear Strikes.]

Author Robert Krulwich has adopted wholesale a version of Easter Island's history purveyed by two Hawaiian anthropologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo. If true, would it eventuate in the conditions found on Easter Island by Twentieth Century visitors from civilized lands? It seems so. Is it well supported by any form of evidence? Unclear, as no evidence is presented in the article. But the implications Krulwich wants us to draw are as plain as a fart:

• Human beings don't possess enough memory or intelligence to grasp the consequences of their actions;
• Success in the economic sense leads inevitably to socioeconomic deterioration and decay;
• We need to become "alarmed," such that the Omnipotent State will rescue us from our drive for "success."

A clearer brief for ecological alarmism, after the fashion of the "global warming / climate change" fanatics, could hardly be composed. After all, we need to be "alarmed." We're too undersupplied with information, too numb to cause and effect, and too inflexible in the face of evidence to react as wisely as our betters. They simply must take us in hand, strip away what remains of our freedom to live, work, and prosper as we please...for our own good!

Splendor of the risen Christ, there are days I think that even one more article this contemptuous of Mankind will tip me over. If only our "betters" would wear some identifying sigil -- preferably something easily recognized at a couple of hundred years' distance -- I'd hit the supermarket for a fresh package of Oreo Double-Stufs,^® unpack the Barrett .50, and go looking for a well placed clock tower.

But that's enough of happy fantasies. Until Christmas morning, at least.

---

Why are the eco-fascists so determined to stamp out human economic progress? How many of them are sincere? Are the rest merely power-seekers, or ought we to look for additional motivations for so much Chicken-Littleism?

I find it hard to credit any great number with sincere convictions, inasmuch as so few practice what they preach. "The man who eats meat cannot sneer at the butcher," as Heinlein put it. The eco-fascists tend to live just as well as the sane among us -- and in some cases, so indulgently as to defeat any imaginable attempt at rationalization.

Once sincerity is subtracted, only low motivations remain.

The power motivation is the obvious one. Eco-alarmism is an obvious play for totalitarian power over all of life. Were we to cede our remaining freedom to the cause of "protecting the planet" from our supposed eco-villainy, no imaginable development would fail to be used as a rationale for confining and restricting us. I have no doubt that there are many in the eco-fascist movement for whom that is the end in view:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides....

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom....

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economical growth.

We will have to learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.

A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her....

Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole. In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and the parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of mankind. In democratic countries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most. Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

Take a moment to shudder over that before we turn to the motivation that will really sicken you.

---

A brief digression to an important ancillary topic: In a low-energy, subsistence-only economy, where an individual's life consists solely of actions performed to keep him alive, there is no "extra" time, and certainly no pool of "extra" resources, with which to attend to developing crises, including crises that can be clearly foreseen. An economy locked into a subsistence-only pattern will inevitably experience the sort of degradation that beset the Easter Islanders, precisely because its members will have no way to avert nor escape it without endangering their immediate survival.

Are the trees falling? Is the moisture departing the soil? Are rats overrunning the island and eliminating what little prospect of agriculture might remain? Nothing to be done about it just now; we're all too hungry. Besides, the search for potable water takes what little time we have left after we've harvested and consumed the morning's ration of rat tartare.

Only a high-energy economy can cope with such developments. First, it provides its members with the economic signals -- prices -- required to foretell a looming crisis. Second, it accumulates the resources needed to cope with such a development. Third and finally, it enables its members to work against it without sacrificing the needs of immediate survival. Where subsistence economies dwindle and die, high-energy trade-based economies adapt and prosper still further.

Which sort of economy was that of Easter Island?

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The most important low motivation for demanding the suppression of economic growth and the resultant prosperity is envy: the desire to see another person brought low even at cost to oneself. Joseph Sobran and others have called it "hatred of the good for being good," which captures the corruption at the core of the envy-ridden soul. It is a wholly destructive emotion. In tandem with tribal hatreds, it is responsible for nearly all the misery in pre-civilized societies. Yet, as Helmut Schoeck has so brilliantly pointed out, it is the animating force behind every campaign that flies the banners of "redistribution" or "social justice:"

Envy is ineluctable, implacable and irreconcilable, is irritated by the slightest differences, is independent of the degree of inequality, appears in its worst form in social proximity among near relatives, provides the dynamic for every revolution yet cannot of itself produce any kind of coherent revolutionary program.

The hatred of the envious synergizes beautifully with the desires of power-seekers. Indeed, the emissions of American power-seekers are principally concerned with eliciting envy from targeted groups and then promising to assuage it if given power. This program is centuries old. It's not new even here in America; the history of the "Progressive" movement, all the way back to the Benthamites and the followers of Edward Bellamy, bears this out in full.

The very first thing to suspect of a man who demands that which is not his by right is that he's driven by envy. The first thing to suspect of a public figure such as the odious Robert Reich, who harps on "inequality" and demands redistribution or economic control by the State, is that he seeks to mobilize the envious to propel him to power.

In neither case should their demands be respected in even the slightest degree.

---

Leaving aside questions of motivation for the nonce, the plaints of the Krulwiches, the Reiches, and the rest of their ilk are attacks upon growth, prosperity, and success as we have known it. What they advocate, whether expressly or sotto voce, is failure. Those who protest that they merely want to halt or restrain growth are either deluded or deceitful, for the stasis they claim to champion is entirely unstable. Introduce any perturbation whatsoever into their scheme and it collapses with a swiftness to boggle the imagination.

The end in view is always power over others: either the totalitarian control for which power-seekers have yearned since Man first walked upright, or the power to destroy those who, being exemplars of success and well-being, cast shadows upon the envious by their very existence.

Let them be recognized and labeled as what they are: failurists, men who create nothing, yet demand that the rest of us huddle in the cold and the dark.

Grant them neither respect nor respite.

Death by Government

The following post has been shamelessly stolen from HERE with the author's permission for three reasons:
1.It needs the widest possible exposure
2. It exposes the mindset of the pc mainstream media, and
3. This ageing blogster lacks the literary capabilities to improve upon it

Government More Likely to Kill Your Kids Than a School Shooter Is

By Thomas Hochmann
December 14th, 2013

In light of the sensationalist news coverage of yesterday's Arapahoe High School shooting, I thought it would be fun to look at some actual facts about school shootings. I know, I know... It's so old fashioned to resort to such inconvenient things as facts. Please forgive me for committing this grave sin against the journalistic standards of the 21st century.
First off, there are 132,656 K-12 schools in the US. From 2003 to date, there have been 76 shootings in US schools. 53 of those shootings resulted in deaths. Thus, over this 10 year period, the US has experienced an average of 5.3 fatal school shootings per year. Using these numbers, you can figure out that the odds that any given school will experience a fatal shooting during an entire calendar year are about 1 in 25,029.
Compare that figure that to the odds that you will die from:

• An air travel accident (1 in 20,000)
• Drowning (1 in 8,942)
• Electrocution (1 in 5,000)
• Falling down (1 in 246)
• Committing suicide (1 in 121)
• A car crash (1 in 100)

According to Wikipedia, "schools will do a lockdown drill one or two times per year." In anticipation of an event that has a 1 in 25,029 chance of actually occurring at a given school, children have a 100% certainty that they will be terrorized by the school itself at least once every year. On any given school day, there's at least a 1 in 270 chance that the school will frighten the crap out of your child with a lockdown drill.
Schools don't have mandatory drowning drills (though death by drowning is twice as likely as experiencing a fatal school attack), or mandatory "how not to fall down" classes (100 times as likely), or mandatory "don't get in a car because you might die" drills (250 times). They don't even devote this much shock-and-awe theatrics to teaching kids about cancer, which has a 1 in 7 chance of killing you (3,575 times more likely than a fatal school shooting).
As a fun aside, it's worth noting that you have a 1 in 89 chance of being killed by your own government. That's right: it's 281 times more likely that your own government will kill you or your child than your child's school will experience a fatal gun attack.
Funny how the schools don't drill kids on how to evade the police or withdraw their consent from government, both of which are far more likely sources of death and destruction than any crazed civilian gunman.

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A Day Of Hope

The two great preparatory seasons of the liturgical year, Advent and Lent, are intended to stimulate reflection and resolution among the Christian faithful. Sadly, Advent is shrugged aside by many, owing to the huge secular demands the "holiday season" imposes on us. Scarcely are Thanksgiving and its indulgences behind us than the time has come to...shop? Buy and decorate a "Christmas tree?" Festoon the house with garlands of red, green, and gold? Inundate the Postal Service with a blizzard of Hallmark's finest? Arrange our schedules to accommodate as many of our relatives' and friends' seasonal celebrations as possible?

Gahh.

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I finished the first draft of Freedom's Fury just yesterday afternoon. Sent it off to my beta reader with the last of my energy. It was a draining, emotionally wringing experience. I'll be awhile recovering from it. That's what completing an emotionally and spiritually evocative story does to me. But in this case, it did something else as well: something for which my gratitude knows no bounds.

Those of you who've read Which Art In Hope and Freedom's Scion know how I tried to weave gentle Christian themes into those tales of a wholly ungoverned world. It wasn't easy. The political and sociological motifs were so compelling to me that it was a rearguard struggle to meld them with the spiritual content I've tried to incorporate into everything I write. I'm not wholly satisfied with those efforts -- what writer is ever wholly satisfied with a completed story? -- though for the life of me I can't see how I might have done better with them.

Freedom's Fury, a tale of love, war, and the emergence of political conflicts and structures on Hope, a world populated by the descendants of Spoonerite anarchists, was an even greater challenge. As the conclusion to the Spooner Federation saga, it had to complete the evolution of the sociopolitical mechanisms developed in the earlier novels. That took quite a lot of hard thought and careful character motivation and orientation. Figures who might not have "had it in them" when they first appeared on Hope's stage had to be brought forward and animated with the most powerful of fuels. In one case, they fashioned a seemingly ordinary man into a king; in another, they burned the unfortunate vessel to a crisp.

But on every page, behind every act of the tragedy, stood the Cross and the shadows it casts upon men.

I'm not going to elaborate further on that just now. You'll see what I mean when you read the novel. God and my cover artist willing, it will be out in eBook format no later than mid-February.

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It's massively unfortunate that Ayn Rand so polluted the meaning of the word sacrifice. Rand was, of course, a case-hardened secularist who held religion in contempt. She was unable to cope with the cleavage between the teachings of the great figures of the Christian tradition, highest among them Jesus Himself, and the exploitation of those teachings by men who cared more for worldly authority and stature than for God's love and mercy. Thus, she declined to deal with the fundamental meaning of sacrifice as expressed in its etymology: to make holy.

Christ Himself introduced a measure of uncertainty into the Jews' traditional interpretation of sacrifice:

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth. “Follow me,” he said to him. And he got up and followed him. As Jesus was having a meal in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard this he said, “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” [Matthew 9:9-13]

Indeed, the point was so important that He repeated it:

At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick the grain and eat. But when the Pharisees saw this they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is against the law to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry—how he entered the house of God and they ate the sacred bread, which was against the law for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that the priests in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are not guilty? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” [Matthew 12:1-8]

Judaic practice, of course, followed the tradition of the burnt offering: the deliberate rendering of food, animal, vegetable, or both, unfit for human consumption as a symbolic offering to God. I've written about the revolution in religious thought Jesus's words and deeds wrought upon this subject in particular. That revolution culminated with His Passion and is commemorated at every celebration of the Eucharist by mortal men.

Holiness is the supreme expression of wholeness: of congruence with God's Will as expressed in the laws He has written for this universe. Among those laws is one we rail against at every turn, despite its obvious immutability: that all things have a price. As a somewhat less exalted figure has written:

“Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain....The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself--ultimate cost for perfect value.”

They who most highly valued freedom, during the years of our Revolution, had to risk their lives for it -- and many paid the ultimate price. They who value justice are often compelled to pay the same price. Many a mother has paid that price in an attempt, successful or not, to protect her children. And throughout the two millennia behind us, many men, including most of the Apostles, have been compelled to surrender their mortal lives for the sake of remaining true to their faith.

Let him who dares condemn those men and their sacrifices.

---

A human life is an organic whole. Its events are connected to one another by bonds of causation and ripples of consequence that can sometimes be difficult to see. Yet the connections are always there. We would be unable to make sense of our experiences, learn the lessons they bear for us, if it were otherwise.

Each of the protagonists of Freedom's Fury confronts a point of crisis, a fork in his life where he must either sacrifice or admit that what he values isn't as important to him as he'd claimed it to be. A superficial reading of the book will leave the reader puzzled by that description. They win, don't they? They get what they seek from their enterprises, don't they? Yes, they do. But they pay a price for each such gain. Sometimes the price isn't obvious until long after it's been "rung up."

A man's continuity of values and commitment to them, including the price they demand, is what elevates him above the common run. It's the fee for his admission to the halls of greatness. The highest and most dramatic of such figures are our greatest heroes. We see their lives as expressions of their values, despite the obvious truism that any mortal, however dedicated, will have his lapses and his intervals of doubt. In identifying them with the values they championed, we contrive to see them whole. We measure ourselves against their integrity of purpose, dimly aware that in that wholehearted commitment to something greater than oneself lies the true meaning of heroism.

In that wholeness resides the holiness of life.

---

I've written in the past about the "private experience" that, coupled to the desire for transcendence, will allow one to complete one's journey to faith. From time to time a Gentle Reader will write to me inquiring -- sometimes pleading, sometimes demanding -- what constitutes an experience of that sort. It's an impossible question to answer in any way but this one: When it happens to you, you'll recognize it at once.

In these latter years, I've come to believe that to open oneself to such an experience, one must live in full commitment to one's values, whatever they may be. Commitment that complete implies that when the price for upholding and advancing them is presented to the holder, he pays it willingly and without attempting to haggle. He recognizes that the price is inseparable from the value itself.

You might think that's oversimplified. Aren't there bad values, of a sort that God frowns upon? Of course. But bad values lived with full commitment tend to evoke corrective forces. Those forces charge a price that reduces the transaction to a pure loss. Afterward we are reoriented, made aware of our errors, and equipped to do better. That, too, is an aspect of the wholeness of life. With a single necessary exception, there are no saints who were not also sinners.

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Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is the Sunday of Hope. We are counseled to elevate our hopes above our fears, to petition God confidently for sustenance in facing our trials, and to look forward with the optimism of persons who really, truly believe in the possibility of admission to eternal bliss in His nearness. Christmas, the commemoration of the birth of Jesus and the second highest of all the holy days, is almost upon us. The season is His and ours, for He came to free us from the chains of sin and open the gates of heaven to us.

It's not a sacrifice of shopping time, or decorating time, or time sending out greeting cards or responses to party invitations, to spend an hour reflecting on that. It's an admission that above the secular trappings of the season there are values that stand infinitely higher: values to which we can and should commit ourselves, not only for the "holiday season" but for all time to come.

May God bless and keep you all.

Assorted

Look, I know you come here for the weighty, ponderous stuff. I know you find spiritual relief in the high-toned sentiments and the impeccable grammar. I know you look forward to wallowing in the multitude of "howevers," "therefores," and of course the "indeeds." (Which reminds me, my royalty payment to Glenn Reynolds should go out this morning.) But I have my days, Gentle Reader. I have my days. And this, I regret to say, is one of them.

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1. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a funeral...so let's have some fun with it!"

The line above comes from either Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women On the Moon, I forget which. Anyway, I surely hope the ghost of Nelson Mandela has a sense of humor -- the living Mandela never displayed one -- because his recent commemoration must have been the biggest laugh riot of 2013:

"I don’t want to be emotional but this is one of the greatest moments of my life,” declared Nelson Mandela upon meeting the Spice Girls in 1997. So I like to think he would have appreciated the livelier aspects of his funeral observances. The Prince of Wales, who was also present on that occasion in Johannesburg, agreed with Mandela on the significance of their summit with the girls: “It is the second-greatest moment in my life,” he said. “The greatest was when I met them the first time.” His Royal Highness and at least two Spice Girls (reports are unclear) attended this week’s service in Soweto, and I’m sure it was at least the third-greatest moment in all of their lives. Don’t ask me where the other Spice Girls were. It is a melancholy reflection that the Spice Girls’ delegation was half the size of Canada’s, which flew in no fewer than four Canadian prime ministers, which is rather more Canadian prime ministers than one normally needs to make the party go with a swing.

But the star of the show was undoubtedly Thamsanqa Jantjie, the sign-language interpreter who stood alongside the world’s leaders and translated their eulogies for the deaf. Unfortunately, he translated them into total gibberish, reduced by the time of President Obama’s appearance to making random hand gestures, as who has not felt the urge to do during the great man’s speeches. Mr. Jantjie has now pleaded in mitigation that he was having a sudden hallucination because he is a violent schizophrenic. It has not been established whether he is, in fact, a violent schizophrenic, or, as with his claim to be a sign-language interpreter, merely purporting to be one. Asked how often he has been violent, he replied, somewhat cryptically, “A lot.”...

That would never happen in Washington, of course. But how heartening, as one watches the viral video of Obama droning on while a mere foot and a half away Mr. Jantjie rubs his belly and tickles his ear, to think that the White House’s usual money-no-object security operation went to the trouble of flying in Air Force One, plus the “decoy” Air Force One, plus support aircraft, plus the 120-vehicle motorcade or whatever it’s up to by now, plus a bazillion Secret Service agents with reflector shades and telephone wire dangling from their ears, to shepherd POTUS into the secured venue and then stand him onstage next to an $85-a-day violent schizophrenic. In the movie version—In the Sign of Fire—grizzled maverick Clint Eastwood will be the only guy to figure it out at the last minute and hurl himself at John Malkovich, as they roll into the orchestra pit with Malkovich furiously signing “Ow!” and “Eek!” But in real life I expect they’ll just double the motorcade to 240 vehicles and order up even more expensive reflector shades.

As always with Mark Steyn, the whole thing is a must-read. 'Nuff said.

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2. Hey, a "turducken" is one thing...

We seasonal gluttons do have our pride, you know:

So, what would we think of a Christmas Tinner, an entire Christmas dinner in, you guessed it, a can? Would it be the most convenient mass-produced full-course meal ever, or just the latest sacrilegious insult to the the holiest of holidays? U.K. based video game retailer GAME purports to be offering the condensed meal as “the ultimate innovation” for those who “can’t tear themselves away from their new consoles and games on Christmas Day.”

A diagram on the GAME’s product site lists each of the nine courses as individual layers, starting with scrambled eggs and bacon on top, followed by mince pies and a main course of turkey, potatoes, Brussels sprouts and roasted carrots in the middle, and finishing up with a creamy layer of Christmas pudding. The product, which we suspect is more of an art piece than a serious commercial product, was designed by graphic artist Chris Godfrey, who, oddly enough, had previously created a similarly gimmicky 12-course romantic dinner as a way of lampooning the marketing tactics used by the food industry to sell processed goods. To make that version, he spent an hour preparing each gelatinized layer before adding it to the concoction so that the delineated portions remained intact. It was meant to be easily served right out of the can without the extraneous need for tidying up afterwards.

Gentle Reader, I could actually feel myself gaining weight as I read that story. "Obscene" doesn't quite do the notion justice. Yes, yes, I know a lot of very small households will lament over the wastefulness of a "traditional" Christmas feast this year, what with prices being so high and all the kids being far away / at loggerheads with one another / busy with their new sex partners and toys, but still! Is nothing sacred?

Here at the Fortress of Crankitude, we'll tie down with a simple repast of eggs and Tactical Bacon, and a jug of Gallo's finest. Or perhaps we'll do it posh: a Monte Cristo with a side of hash browns. I'm sure the Comte wouldn't mind.

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3. You think things are getting dicey here?

India might soon suffer a violent revolution:

While all vegetables have become more expensive this year, the most dramatic change has been for onions. In August, Mumbai saw prices more than double, with some markets selling at 80 rupees per kilo. Elementary economics would tell you that prices are up because of a reduced supply, and indeed, this year’s production of 16.65 million tons is down 4.8 percent from 17.5 million last year, partly because less land was farmed and partly because a heavy monsoon season damaged output in the western states, the heart of India’s onion production.

The people aren’t taking the rising price lightly. When August showed no signs of relief, armed robbers looted a truck transporting 40 tons of onions on the Jaipur-Delhi highway. A few days later, reports surfaced of another robbery in Rajasthan’s Nagaur district. Desperate, India made moves to import onions from Pakistan for the first time since 2010’s onion crisis. What are neighbors for, if not to come to the rescue when you need a bowl of sugar? Or in this case, several thousand tons of onions. But as the huge demand from India spiked the price within Pakistan as well, the latter banned exports to its neighbor. A 24-ton shipment arrived from Afghanistan instead. And additional relief, albeit fleeting, came from within India itself, when Groupon launched a wildly popular weeklong special: one kilo of onions for the low, low price of nine rupees.

In the ladies’ section of the Mumbai Local one evening, an auntie hints at the political importance of the price increase, while reviving an old joke. “Onions are bringing tears to everyone’s eyes in Maharashtra,” she says, adding, “They can and have toppled governments, you know!”

Indeed. (Damn, that's another nickel I owe Reynolds.) States have fallen over far less. I recall something about the American colonies and tea.

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4. You Can't Make This Stuff Up Dept.

Just how gullible do they think we are?

In an astounding feat that defies several of the known laws of nature, a 17 year old North Carolina boy managed to shoot himself in the head while his hands were cuffed behind his back. Allegedly, young Jesus Huerta died while he was alone, locked in the back of a police cruiser, after having been patted down.

What's really astounding about this tale is that the police chief wants us to accept it verbatim:

“I know that it is hard for people not in law enforcement to understand how someone could be capable of shooting themselves while handcuffed behind the back,” [Police Chief Jose] Lopez said. “While incidents like this are not common, they unfortunately have happened in other jurisdictions in the past."

I know, I know: not funny. Well, reflect on this: the probability that a formal Internal Affairs investigation will unreservedly support the cops' story approaches 100%. It might not evoke ha-ha laughter, but it surely tells us there's "funny business" going on -- and not just in North Carolina.

[Courtesy of Angry Mike.]

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5. From The Fashion Front Lines.

Denmark's prime minister, the exceedingly attractive Helle Thorning-Schmidt, might soon become as well known for her fashion choices as for her dubious judgment about "selfies:"

Here we see one of the ineradicable differences between men and women. No man not in an unbreakable hypnotic trance would ever be seen in such garb. (All right, all right, the blouse and the skirt are fetching enough.) Women, on the other hand...? Well, perhaps not all women -- I have no fear of showing that photo to the C.S.O. -- but imagine what Michelle Obama might do, considering the episode immortalized below:

And that's all for today, Gentle Reader.