Schismata Part 1

     Depending on what time zone you were in at the time, either today or tomorrow, in the Year of Our Lord 1969, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the surface of the Moon. For many, that moment was the high-water mark of Western Civilization. In the person of an American astronaut, Mankind had escaped its womb and begun its journey to the stars.

     But the matter was far from settled. “Those who have not joy” (C. S. Lewis) immediately began to denigrate or cast doubt on the achievement. Some were blatant, others subtle. A number strove to recast the Apollo landing as somehow tainted by slavery, “imperialism,” or whatever else they could conjure up. A few tried to reduce its significance by stressing that the Moon is “conveniently close,” which makes getting there “no big deal.” Others pointed to the competitive, quasi-combative aspect of the “Space Race.” Had it not been for the Soviets’ early lead in space travel, they claimed, America would never have cared about a Moon landing. And so on, ad nauseam.

     We ought to have paid more attention to the denigrators and naysayers. They were the point of an invisible spear aimed at America’s heart. There was significant pressure behind that spear. It had already made an inroad into our national psyche. It penetrated ever more deeply as the years rolled past.

* * *

     The Sixties, for all the hype that’s been lavished on them, were the beginning of America’s decline. Those who sought to destroy us knew that you don’t start at the top. To bring down a society, you locate its foundation and work to undermine it. The foundation stones of the extraordinary achievement that Robert A. Heinlein called “the Renaissance Civilization” were all but invisible to the great majority of Americans. In consequence, we failed to recognize their attackers or grasp the aim of their efforts.

     Rather than follow my usual practice, I’ll cut to the chase:

The foundation of the United States of America
Was made from Christian ethics and political freedom.

     Those aren’t things that would yield to the first blows of the chisel. They are – or were – too deeply ingrained in the American psyche to be quickly shattered. So deeply, in fact, that the average American of the first decades after World War II never thought about them. They were omnipresent, like air. More, we had inherited them from prior generations. It was easy to believe that that’s just how things are and always will be.

     We never thought about why we believed that. That made it easy for the underminers to chip away undisturbed.

* * *

     It was the Sixties in which the attacks on our foundation became generally visible. Conspicuous socialist and communist movements began to proliferate in “centers of higher education.” Those things are inherently opposed to both freedom and Christianity. Their purveyors were clever; they aimed first at cultural targets: the arts. They strove to displace the esthetics that ruled music, painting, sculpture, dance, fiction, and entertainment. For they understood, as many of us did not, that those things reinforce a people’s sense of themselves and their achievements.

     Ironically, those who railed against the new, anti-Christian esthetics were beaten back with a weapon that baffled them: artistic freedom. That was presented to us with the implication that the nouvel artiste has an affirmative right to stand alongside traditional practitioners. It occurred to very few that freedom includes the freedom to condemn.

     Collectivist nostrums would soon infiltrate the educational system. Clouds began to form around basic concepts such as rights and justice. The arts had lifted the tent flap and made it possible. Eastern European intellectuals had embraced the Gramscian prescription and brought it to receptive American “scholars” who were looking for something “new.”

     First in the arts, then in “soft” studies such as psychology, sociology, and economics, American universities became battlegrounds between the Left and the Right.

* * *

     This is really an introductory piece. I can’t finish it in one Sunday; there’s too much ground to cover. (Besides, I have laundry to do, a cat room to clean, and meatballs to make.) I wanted to introduce the idea and ideas of the Sixties, “the Summer of Love,” as the appropriate starting point for examining the attack on America’s conceptual foundation.

     It’s time for the gloss that’s been smeared over that decade to be wiped away, in the interests of clearsighted understanding of our plight and its roots.

The Unique Product

     States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude and their decay. – Walter S. Landor

     Incentives and disincentives determine everything.

     Yes, I know that’s too strong a statement. But to put it that way makes it memorable, a mantra for the armchair analyst. He can chant it as he strives to understand some process that at first looks baffling.

     Franz Oppenheimer divided human action in pursuit of a goal into two categories: the economic means, which is characterized by production and peaceful trade; and the political means, whose determinant is the use of coercion: i.e., force and intimidation. For most of the past century, the economic means has steadily if grudgingly given way to the political means. This deserves to be studied far more deeply than it has been to date, for the political means is inherently parasitic. It does not produce; rather, it feeds on the production of others.

     The organization of the political means is the institution we call the State.

     The specifics of how States originate have varied across the millennia, but the conditions required for its persistence have always been what they are today: It must possess both the tolerance, however grudging, of the subject populace, and the acceptance of all forces sufficiently powerful and proximate to challenge it. I’ve written about the latter requirement on several occasions. Today, my focus is on the former one: specifically, what might cause a State to lose the tolerance of its subjects.

* * *

     The detail questions behind subjects’ tolerance of a State are simple:

1. What “product” does the State offer us?
2. Can we afford it?
3. Is it “good enough?”
4. If any of the answers to the above questions are negative, what would it cost to oppose and perhaps ultimately topple the State?

     The answers to those questions are never uniform and never static. They change according to time, place, and the identity of the person answering them. When the answers begin to coalesce in the negative direction, the State is at risk of rebellion.

     States claim to offer their subjects many things, but beneath them all is an offer of justice. Give the State the monopoly power to define and enforce justice, and thereafter the State will see to those duties. Those who seek to offend against justice will be pursued and punished; when possible, their victims will be made whole. That offer is the State’s basic product.

     In the usual case, subjects are not permitted to refuse the State’s product. Penalties are imposed upon those who try. The State is therefore not only a monopolist, but one that can enforce the acceptance of its product. That brings the price and quality of the product to the forefront. How good is the State’s justice, and how expensive is it over the long term?

     In the marketplace, vendors compete through price, quality, and their reputations. That allows many vendors to sell products that perform the same or greatly similar functions. The State’s product is qualitatively different.

     Competition is anathema to the State, for it must involve the loss of the State’s monopoly over the use of coercion. When a competitor arises, the State immediately moves to crush it. Should it succeed in doing so swiftly and without greatly disturbing its subjects’ tenor of life, it would represent its action as justice. Otherwise, the applicable terms would be insurrection, rebellion, or civil war.

     But a competitor to the State can only be potentially viable if it can outperform the State at its own game: justice. That is the incentive for the State to deliver on its promise of justice. The open and obvious non-provision of justice by States around the world is a curiosity of note.

* * *

     Inasmuch as States have been notably deficient in providing their subjects with justice, they must defend themselves from potential competitors who are willing and able to do the job. There aren’t many ways to pre-squelch competition. Probably the commonest approach is to deny potential competitors the means by which to compete: i.e., to outlaw the possession of weapons by anyone but agents of the State. It’s been widely tried, but it’s seldom worked.

     In one of the most dramatic cases of competition in the provision of justice, the Cosa Nostra, deeply analyzed in this essay, has evolved an approach of unsurpassed competitive effectiveness. In parts of Italy it commands more respect than the State. Yet the Cosa Nostra is more voracious than the State, and even more ruthless. Russia’s Bratva is organized along similar lines, and is similarly voracious and ruthless.

     Many States have been baffled by organized crime. They recognize the threat and move against it, but without much success. That they’re being out-competed and could redress the problem simply by fulfilling their promises of justice at a modest cost to their subjects seems not to occur to them. At least, that’s the gentlest explanation.

     Justice is a unique product. The State inevitably insists on being a monopoly provider, then proceeds to underperform ever more visibly as time passes. That incentivizes the emergence of competitors.

     When several organizations in a given locale simultaneously offer to provide justice, violence won’t necessarily produce a victor. Even the most powerful State can fail to maintain its monopoly. Sometimes the only possible resolution is a fragmentation into separate territories – “turf” is the usual term – involving agreements not to compete across territorial borders.

     This is the process that has produced our current world order, in which States compete with one another for territory and population. It also accounts for how and when new nations are born. That having been said, I shall leave all further inferences to my Gentle Readers.

A Reissue

     As of this morning, a new, illustrated edition of The Warm Lands is available at Amazon:

     The world of Aeol is dying, and no one knows why.

     The mana conduits that once sustained all life on the continent have shifted. Rivers of ancient power that flowed north to south for centuries now run east to west, drawn toward a single destination no one can explain. Gregor of Serebal, a journeyman sorcerer tasked with charting these invisible currents, has crossed the lifeless wastes of the Great Waste alone. He has seen entire civilizations reduced to scattered pockets of desperate survival. He is not easily shaken.

     But nothing prepared him for Anam.

     Laella was born gifted, touched by magic she never asked for and had not learned to control. When that magic made her a virgin mother, her village turned against her. Her son was executed by the ruler who feared what she represented. She was left with nothing: no family, no home, no future. When Gregor arrives, she is a woman already stripped of everything.

     What grows between them in the wasteland is not a fantasy romance. It is something quieter and more lasting than that. Two people, each carrying damage the other cannot fully see, choosing each other anyway. Walking west together toward a mystery that will demand more from them than either imagined possible.

     The Warm Lands is a standalone literary fantasy built entirely around its characters. There are no doorstop sequels, no sprawling cast, no magic system explained in appendices. There are only Gregor, Laella, and the world they must save at the cost of everything they have fought to build together.

     For readers who have been searching for a fantasy that takes them seriously.

     Scroll down a bit and you’ll find the three-minute video trailer I’ve commissioned for it.

     Yes, I’ve raised the price. I hope to recoup some of the $4800 I’ve spent on the new cover and the illustrations. The C.S.O., ever the accountant, shrugged and said “You have to spend money to make money.” We shall see!

     There will be a companion paperback edition in a few days as well.

Applause From An Old Man

     Once in a great while, an essay comes my way that leaves me speechless from its insight. I’ve just received such an essay from Haretina Kukuri. It’s so penetrating that all I can do is applaud.

     Haretina brilliantly traces the lineaments of the world order from the days when what mattered above all else was force and geographic hegemony, to today, when finance matters as much as arms and armies.

     Within the aggregate of maneuvers and operations we call “finance,” there is always a foundation stone. When the currencies of great nations were redeemable in specie, that stone was gold. But the wars of the Nightmare Century gave the great powers the opportunity they sought to forsake specie redeemability. But a foundation stone was still required. The Bretton Woods system implied it; Haretina makes it visible:

     The order that resulted rested on a distinctive synthesis: American predominance supplied the material foundation; multilateral institutions supplied procedural legitimacy. Together they produced stability and integration without precedent — trade expanded dramatically, investment accelerated, Western Europe and Japan rebuilt into industrial prosperity. But the system’s true foundation was neither treaty nor institution.
     It was confidence: confidence that obligations would be honoured, currencies would hold, rules would bind, and institutions would function under strain. Trust was the invisible infrastructure. Central banks accumulated dollars because American markets combined depth, liquidity and legal certainty no competitor could match; investors accepted modest Treasury yields because institutional credibility reduced uncertainty more effectively than higher returns elsewhere.

     Once again, hearken to the great Benjamin M. Anderson:

     There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. -- Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914 -- 1946

     Gold maintained a shadow presence in international finance even after the Bretton Woods agreement. But in truth, what mattered above all was the other parties’ confidence in American financial strength and the trustworthiness of American traders and markets. That confidence has waned somewhat this past half-century, though not to the point of revoking the dollar’s status as the world’s “reserve currency.”

     In her conclusion, Haretina tacitly invokes one of the key insights of cybernetic analysis, The Law of Requisite Variety:

     The Law of Requisite Variety (coined by cybernetician W. Ross Ashby) states that to successfully control or adapt to a complex system, the internal complexity and behavioral flexibility of the controller must be equal to or greater than the complexity of the environment it faces.
     Also known as "variety absorbs variety", this First Law of Cybernetics essentially means that the entity with the most available options, responses, and adaptable behaviors will dictate the system's outcome. If an environment throws a highly unpredictable set of challenges at you, a rigid, inflexible set of responses will eventually fail.

     In Haretina’s words:

     The four-phase framework proposed here is not a rigid periodisation but a way of seeing a single transformation whole. Across two centuries the instruments changed relentlessly — sovereign loans became development finance, banking missions became multilateral institutions, fixed parities dissolved into integrated capital markets, and competition now runs through payment systems, reserve currencies, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, critical minerals and regulatory authority. The continuity lies beneath: states converting financial capability into political influence while economising on coercion.
     Military power remains indispensable, and negotiation remains essential. But neither now determines the structure of international order by itself. Order increasingly depends on who designs the institutions through which capital moves, liquidity is created, payments settle, technology is financed and confidence is sustained.
     The next chapter of international politics will not be written primarily through territorial conquest or ideological confrontation.
     It will be written through competing financial architectures.
     The decisive question is no longer who possesses the greatest wealth.
     It is who organises the networks through which the world’s wealth circulates.
     That is the diplomacy of finance.

     I told you to keep an eye on this young woman. She’s going places.

Because That’s What They Do

     First, Happy Bastille Day. If your schooling didn’t include the details of the French Revolution of 1789, you can read about some of the more prominent ones here. Even if their reasons differ, mobs storming prisons have taken Bastille Day as their model ever since.

     Second, Long Island is about to be broiled once again, which may force me into our basement for the duration. Yes, we have central air conditioning, but the system starts to struggle when the outdoor temperature exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, there are two more computers down there… but there are also a large TV, a comfortable recliner, and several hundred movies on DVD. Which of those will command my attention is always a crapshoot.

     Third – here we are again, Gentle Reader – a news item that slipped past me a few days back has been brought to my attention:

     Alarming new satellite images show signs that the Iranian regime appears to be rebuilding its suspected nuclear facilities at Pickaxe Mountain and Parchin.
     Footage of both areas – which sustained extensive damage during US and Israeli-led bombing campaigns that began in late February – reveal “major signs” of activity, according to CNN, which obtained images from private firms.
     Such construction likely runs afoul of the Memorandum of Understanding that Iran and US negotiators reached last month during a cease-fire that President Trump called “over” this week following Iranian attacks on shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

     Are there any Gentle Readers who didn’t expect that? Who sincerely expected the ayatollahs to abide by the MoU? That could only be due to a severe case of wishful thinking. Imagine me tut-tutting and waving an index finger.

* * *

     Long ago, I wrote:

     Possibly no novel in history has excited as much admiration or discussion as J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy classic The Lord Of The Rings. If you're one of the three remaining English-speakers who has yet to read this extraordinary work of the imagination, it's essentially the tale of the final conflict between the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, belatedly come together in a defensive federation, and Sauron the Dark Lord, the superhuman embodiment of evil, who seeks to enslave the entire world, simply because that's what he does.

     Enslaving others makes Sauron happy. Perhaps he could also get some use out of them – as soldiers against Gondor, for example – but even if he could not, enslavement is his supreme temporal aim.

     For Islamists worldwide, the supreme temporal aim is the destruction of all competing creeds. The destruction of all Jews must come first, for it was Jews who first defied Muhammad. No agreement struck with another power will change that. Their creed – I refuse to call Islam a “religion” – demands the death of all Jews everywhere. The concentration of Jews in Israel and Israel’s geographic placement make it Islam’s foremost target.

     But Islamists know that destroying Israel will require nuclear weapons. They also regard agreements struck with “unbelievers” as to be dismissed when doing so would bring “advantage to Islam.” Thus, their creed makes it next to obligatory for them to enter a “peace agreement” fully intending to violate it. The MoU, in which Iran’s rulers supposedly agree to abandon the quest for nuclear weapons, was signed under the falsest of pretenses, for they intended to violate it from the start.

     I can easily imagine how President Trump, a consummate deal-maker, feels about this. To Trump, keeping one’s given word is a matter of honor and respect for the other party. While Iran’s violation of the MoU is consistent with the behavior of Islamist rulers, it must surely enrage him. We must hope that fury won’t lure him into a ground war, an outcome few Americans would approve.

     Yet what the Post reports is just what Islamists do. They always make such a promise with their fingers crossed.

* * *

     There is no Last Graf. Given prevailing attitudes and America’s experiences with 21st Century warfare, we must not expect an American expeditionary force to invade Iran and topple the Islamic regime. President Trump would resist the idea fiercely, and the preponderance of our citizenry would support him. If the Post’s report of Iranian duplicity is confirmed, the most likely consequence would be the resumption of bombardment of military and political targets within Iran.

     It’s a bleak prospect, but the alternatives are unpalatable.

A New And Vital Voice

     For some time now, I’ve been casting about for “new voices” to whom the beleaguered of our era should pay attention. In the process, I’ve encountered a lot of pompous asses – hey, a man should recognize his kind when he meets one, shouldn’t he? – and no small number of persons who parade erudition in place of insight. What’s missing from most discourse offered to the general public today is something I’ve prized lifelong.

     In Three Days of the Condor, one of the most impressive movies of the Seventies, director Sydney Pollack includes a thematic snatch of a conversation between CIA Director Wabash, played by John Houseman, and Assistant Director Higgins, played by Cliff Robertson:

Wabash: I go even further back than that. Ten years after The Great War, as we used to call it. Before we knew enough to number them.
Higgins: You miss that kind of action, sir?
Wabash: No… I miss that kind of clarity.

     Clarity is the most underappreciated virtue in the discourse of our time. It has often seemed to me that many writers treat it as an enemy – something that could get in the way of achieving public acclaim, or a position in the State Department. You might easily conclude that such a writer isn’t willing to say what he means and stand his ground when confronted about it.

     Clarity makes demands of both the writer and the reader. A clearly written opinion / analysis piece leaves the reader in no doubt about its contentions. It requires the reader to engage with it open-eyed. A lot of readers aren’t happy about being compelled to do so. They need the cushion of periphrasis to keep their sensibilities from getting scuffed up. But readers who matter – readers who reach definite conclusions and base their subsequent decisions on them – love clarity.

     I do.

* * *

     This era might one day be called the Age of Orwell’s Lament. There is so much that’s “plain as a fart,” staring us right in the face, that millions are unwilling to confront. That unwillingness is fundamentally defensive, as Orwell himself was at pains to tell us:

     ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten….
     ‘The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
     One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

     Yet there is a hunger for clarity among Us the People. It accounts for the elections of Donald Trump to the presidency. Trump’s style may be extravagant and occasionally self-glorifying, but he is nevertheless clear. He makes no secret of his intentions, and the common citizen loves him for it.

     The new voices that will command popular sentiment will be champions of clarity. They won’t hide. They may strut, as Trump does, but no one will be able to justly say that they weren’t clear about what they planned. Aspiring opinion-formers – I hear they’re called “thought leaders” these days – should take note and act accordingly.

* * *

     To those Gentle Readers who’ve been asking “But what’s the point?” I must admit to a bit of lede-burying. Yes, there is a new voice to which attention should go. She’s a young woman of conspicuously clear vision, high intelligence, and hard sense. I encountered her by chance at X, where so much is said to so little effect. I hope she will be heard.

     Her name is Haretina Kukuri:

     Haretina Kukuri is a strategic consultant operating at the intersection of commercial brokerage, geopolitical intelligence, and cross-border market navigation.
     Her practice is built on the understanding that the most consequential business decisions are never made in a vacuum. Markets respond to politics. Politics responds to power. And power rarely announces itself in advance.
     Working across emerging and frontier markets, Haretina advises clients who need more than analysis — they need actionable intelligence integrated directly into their decision cycle.

     Miss Kukuri first impressed me with a statement of convictions at X:

Hello. I’m Haretina. 25. Born in Greece

I’ve studied tourism management, criminology, and business with finance. I’ve lived in five countries. I speak five languages. I write about geopolitics, markets, power, and history.

I believe in common sense, which has quietly become a… pic.twitter.com/AnZQ1z0g3K

— Haretina (@HaretinaK) July 5, 2026

     If you want a dose of clarity about important matters, including many that other commentators are loath to address, read Haretina’s whole tweet. Follow it into the comments.

     Europe needs this young woman. Indeed, the whole world needs insight and forthrightness of her caliber, but Europe is dying from the lack of it. Her penetration and clarity are conspicuous in the essays at her website as well.

     Haretina Kukuri is a vital voice for our time, and for times to come.

Context Matters Part 2

     The talk about Citizen Vigilante continues hot and heavy. There are critical voices in the mix. Some consider the film dangerous, while others cheer for the Michael Sanders character and express a yearning that someone make him real. It’s perfectly clear what sensibilities and spirit the film has tapped.

     The facet of the film that’s excited the most negative comments is the scene in which Sanders, enclosed in a steel box, must shoot it out with two dozen SWAT team members. “He didn’t have to do that!” shriek the critics. And indeed, they’re right: he didn’t. But once they had confronted him and made it plain that their mission was to cut him down regardless of the consequences, the moral choice became too clear to avert.

     What did it say about the priorities of those police and their commanders that they would bring seemingly overwhelming firepower to the task of killing Michael Sanders? When rape and murder are running riot throughout Europe? When those same police have been told to treat violent savages as if they were made of spun glass? When justice has become the bitterest word in any language? What did it say about their commander that after the first wave had been eliminated, he sent a second wave, no better prepared, to the same fate?

     It may strike even some who see the matter as I’ve delineated it above as unfortunate, unnecessary to the movie and preferably to be omitted. I disagree completely. I find it to be the element of the film that cuts through all the noise:

The State’s highest priority is always to assert and preserve the supremacy of The State.

     Michael Sanders gave those SWAT members a chance to back away. He allowed that “You’re only doing your jobs,” but followed by telling them what “doing your jobs” – i.e., following their commander’s orders – would bring about. Their commander, a loyal State employee who mouthed “democracy” as if that shibboleth could excuse the complete abrogation of justice, sent them forward into withering fire.

     It had to happen. It was entirely in keeping with both the context of the film and the nature of the State.

* * *

     The question must be posed: Are matters in Europe – or anywhere else – really that bad? Would a real-life Michael Sanders who committed himself to delivering justice to proven criminals be acclaimed by Us the People? Would the minions of the State do their level best to cut him down, while ignoring the savageries being perpetrated by those criminals? And would Sanders’s acclaim among common people have any effect on State priorities and practices?

     Apart from the occasional reportage of some immigrant atrocity, I haven’t really kept track. But it does seem that Europe, which has admitted millions of Third World immigrants to its shores, is trending in that direction. Indeed, matters aren’t that much better in North America.

     Let it be said outright: the majority of those immigrants are Muslims. They were schooled in the most aggressive and violent “faith” the world has ever known. That faith tells them that it’s quite all right – indeed, it’s their duty to Islam — to rape and murder the “unbeliever.” Many of them cannot read the Koran that exhorts them to those deeds. Few have anything to “contribute to society,” even if they have the potential.

     They’ve behaved as the soldiers of a savage conquering army have always done. As their numbers swell, so will their crimes… perhaps faster, at that.

     I’ve written elsewhere that justice in this world is a human artifact. The concept of justice is one of Mankind’s highest intellectual creations. Men have tolerated States among them in the hope that an entity supposedly dedicated to the maintenance of justice would improve upon “nature red in tooth and claw.” The challenge of our time is to read the news and evaluate the validity of that hope.